By Linda Thom
08/02/2008
Last Thursday, while listening to PBS Radio, I heard that Stockton, California has the highest foreclosure rate in the country. As I recall, it was one in 25 mortgages that are in trouble. So who are all these folks who are losing their homes? The interviewer did not elaborate.Listeners heard the sad tale of a realtor who said that he refinanced his home with a variable rate and now, even he, a realtor, could not make his payments and faced foreclosure. He said that many of the people he assisted in making their purchases were coming to him to ask what to do and he said that he had no answers.
Incredible. Who might this unsophisticated rube be who is selling real estate and does not understand variable-rate mortgages? He has a Hispanic name and speaks English with a Spanish accent. That is all one learned from the radio interview.
Knowing of no data set which includes foreclosures by ethnicity and race, I used educational data at the California Department of Education website www.ed-data.k12.ca.us The statistics include numbers of real students-not just samples — by race and ethnicity, test results, free lunches, disabled students, English-learners and a myriad of other interesting and uninteresting facts.
These kids are the children of the parents who are losing their homes. Readers at VDare.com can predict who the kids are but it is worse than one might think.
In the 2006-07 school year, 38,617 students attended classes in the Stockton Unified School District. Forty-three percent (21,505) of the students are Hispanic and 36% of these students are English-learners which means they do not speak English. Overall, a quarter of the students are non-English speakers.
The Asian students make up 12% of enrollment at 4,788 students and among the Asian languages are Hmong, Khmer and Lao for a total of 1488 students or a non-English speaking total of 31%. Mind you, this does not include Filipino or Pacific Islander students who account for another 6% of the students. Less than 1% of these children are non-English speaking.
African-American students comprise 13% of students and White children make up only 10% of the enrollment. Many of the African-American students are probably "economically challenged" also as a whopping 67% of students in the Stockton Unified School District are on free or reduced-price meals. It is no longer just lunches but breakfast and lunch. In San Joaquin County, the location of Stockton Unified, half of students receive free or reduced-price meals so that Stockton is in the tank compared even to the very poor San Joaquin County.
Some of us who have been around for a time remember the days when Joel Kotkin used to wax poetic about all the new immigrant home buyers and how they were revitalizing the neighborhoods of California. As a former bank officer, I used to wonder how in the world these folks could afford to buy homes. When I started paying attention to the changing rules of lending and the inflated real estate prices, I predicted the outcome.
But, then, so did many VDare.com readers. We are not surprised.
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