The Investigative Reporting Workshop and New America Media profiled those hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis in communities of color.

PUBLISHED WITH

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Margaret Cedeno, 54, says she’s in an “unbearable limbo.” She is three months behind on her mortgage payments, but hopes to obtain a loan modification this year. If she goes into foreclosure, the disabled mother of five says she and her family would have nowhere to go.

Photo by Joseph Rodriguez

After two home loans, Margaret Cedeno had to refinance her house in order to pay for health-related improvements.

“If I lost my home, I would die,” she said, “I don’t know how I would live.”

Cedeno, who is arthritic, uses a wheelchair and has poor eyesight, lives with three of her five children and her husband in the four-bedroom, two-bath home she purchased in 1998 for $57,500 on a 30-year fixed loan.

But in 1999, Cedeno took a $20,000 second loan on her home that came with a 19-percent interest rate. Then she refinanced the house in December 2006 for $173,000, to make home improvements critical to her health and physical condition.

While her children are now in their 20s (two have relocated), the three living with her have been unemployed for nearly two years, as has their father. No one in the household is receiving unemployment benefits.

While Cedeno has struggled with economic hardships before, the major difference this time around, she said, is their significantly lower income, mostly from government aid and sporadic jobs. She receives disability compensation of $748 a month compared to the family’s previous total welfare income of $3,600, for her five children, when she first purchased the home.

“I never had a stable place. At one point, I was in a one-bedroom trailer with five kids. I said, ‘never again will this happen.’ ” she said.

When she took the second loan, Cedeno became trapped in debt. Her monthly payment climbed from $450 from $658 to $1,108. She said she never missed a payment and made all possible sacrifices to keep her home, including not buying her children or herself any clothes or gifts. She also delayed utility and car insurance payments. Her husband was out of work and was not receiving unemployment benefits.

But Cedeno’s children “started growing up, and money started going away,” she said. She added she “was losing money faster than getting it.”

The loan and refinancing funds were needed for improvements, such as removing mold from nearly every room and installing handrails.

“I kept getting sick and ended up with asthma, infections in the chest, bronchitis,” Cedeno said, adding that their other bathroom still has mold.

When she refinanced her home with the help of her eldest daughter in December 2006, Cedeno’s monthly payments immediately decreased to $900. But that sum doubled two years later. Her lender, American Home Mortgage, said it couldn’t help, so she paid an independent agency $2,000 for a loan modification she got the same year.

The payment went down to $1,250, and Cedeno’s children, employed at the time, helped her. Her daughter got a second job to help.

Now that Cedeno doesn’t have that same support, she says another loan modification is critical to keep her home, and she can’t pay any one to help her. Her disability check decreased $16 this month, “and even $10 makes a difference,” she said.

Cedeno started working this year with the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America to help her with another modification.