State of Foreclosure

Home foreclosure rates nationwide surged 30% last month. But the next phase of the crisis is already starting in places Cleveland, where at least 10,000 foreclosed houses sit abandoned. Journalist Alex Kotlowitz wrote about this part of the crisis in his article "All Boarded Up" for the New York Times Sunday Magazine recently. He’ll be joined by New Yorker staff writer George Packer who looked at the foreclosure disaster in Florida—a state where, until recently, felons couldn’t vote but could sell mortgages—in his artlce “The Ponzi State.”