GOP candidates shy away from Nevada housing crisis [View all]

[FreakinDJ]

Las Vegas -- As Joseph and Christina Hetherton listened to Newt Gingrich speak this week at the Las Vegas factory where Joseph was laid off last summer, they thought about how their home could go into foreclosure at the end of the month - and how nothing they've heard from presidential candidates in town for today's Nevada GOP caucus sounds like it would help.

Not only do the Hethertons have to come up with $1,429 in three weeks, they also need $175 by then for insulin to help treat Christina's diabetes. Neither of them has health insurance.

If Christina, who works at a bakery, hadn't hit lucky $3 pulls on the slots twice in the past few months, they would have been in peril sooner. This week, their daughter in nursing school took a second job because her husband lost his construction job.

Their story is typical in Nevada, which has the nation's highest unemployment and foreclosure rates, and where 58 percent of the homes are underwater - worth less than what the lender is owed. Nationally, 22 percent of homes are underwater.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/03/MN3N1N2TB2.DTL#ixzz1lQpOEixB

edit - to add photo - "I like pictures"