The real estate crash, 10 years later

Ballooning payments that wrecked mental health and marriages. Homes abandoned with every belonging inside or stripped of every fixture and grotesquely defaced. Neighborhoods with more homes vacated by foreclosure than occupied. In the worst-hit cities, the bursting of the housing bubble has been a long-lasting trauma.

Sy Bean/The Hechinger Report Want to launch a good-paying career without debt? Consider skipping college and learning a trade "All through my life it was, 'If you don't go to college, you're going to end up on the streets,' " Garret Morgan says. But now the 20-year-old is getting paid nearly $30 an hour, with benefits, to learn ironworking. Many construction industries and other vocational trades pay well but can't find nearly enough skilled employees — even as the returns from a bachelor's degree are weakening. Educators are looking at whether career counseling needs to be revamped. Jason Davis/Getty Images James Shaw Jr. stopped a mass shooter but says he's 'just a regular person' who wanted to get home to his daughter Pinned in a Waffle House bathroom, Shaw says he decided "if I was going to die, he was going to have to work for it." He charged the attacker — who had already fatally shot four people and grazed Shaw — wrested the gun away and flung it over a counter. In the aftermath, he started a fundraiser that has collected $180,000 and counting for the victims’ families. His next plans: seek professional help to talk about what happened and love his daughter a lot. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images They control the entire government but still feel like the country has turned against them Republicans hold more political power than they have had in nearly a century — but outside that realm, many see a culture war they’ve lost, maybe permanently. "We want to be treated with respect,” says a columnist. “I'm tired of Hollywood spitting on us. I am tired of academia spitting on us. I'm tired of the news media spitting on us.” Some are even calling to split the country up or speculating about a new civil war. Caitlin O'Hara for NPR A decade later, remembering the crushing debt and lost homes that set off the Great Recession Phoenix saw some of the worst of the housing bubble and subsequent mortgage crisis. Houses doubled in value over five years — then every cent of those gains evaporated. Anyone who bought or refinanced in the meantime was left owing hundreds of thousands more than their home was worth. The market has recovered, but for these homeowners, the psychological scars remain. "I still have nightmares to this day," a Realtor says. "I felt like a sucker," says a locksmith whose home remains "underwater." Lynsey Weatherspoon for NPR A monument lifts the silence around decades of murder and racial terror in the American South — and reflects an evolving Montgomery The Alabama city long had more markers for its role in the Civil War than for its role in the civil rights movement. That has changed in recent years, culminating in a new National Memorial for Peace and Justice that recalls the dehumanizing horror of slavery, as well as the 4,000 victims — an average of more than one a week — killed in Jim Crow-era lynchings nationwide. One local business official says such stark reminders are "putting our city on therapy." You received this message because you're subscribed to our Best of NPR emails. |  Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy | NPR 1111 N. CAPITOL ST. NE WASHINGTON DC 20002