(Photograph by Joseph Rodriguez)
The Big Short, a movie about the real estate bubble and the resulting financial meltdown, is up for an Academy Award for “Best Picture.” So it’s a good time to reflect on the devastation that resulted from that crisis. One of the places that was hit worst was Stockton, Calif., a city of around 300,000 located between San Francisco and Sacramento. At the height of the recession nearly one in ten homes in Stockton was in foreclosure.
The problem became so bad that the city itself declared bankruptcy in 2013 (emerging from it in 2015). At the time it was the largest US city ever to declare bankruptcy. In this photo, Luckie Cordova sits in front of his former home just outside Stockton. His parents bought the home in 2008, but lost it to foreclosure two years later. Luckie is one of nearly 7 million Americans who lost their homes during the Great Recession.
Read more stories by Eric Nee.