The Left and the Foreclosure Crisis: Roots, Resources and Ideology

Abstract

This paper completes an investigation into why there was no major social movement around the foreclosure crisis. The basis of this research was a community study that involved surveys of foreclosed people, community members, and activists, as well as participant observation of anti-foreclosure organizations. Initially I found that lack of membership in or contact with civic organizations on the part of those going through foreclosure was at the heart of the failure to form a movement. The present study adds to this finding by focusing on the groups attempting to organize around foreclosure. I argue that the absence of progressive organizations with organic social roots in the communities affected by foreclosure, lack of resources to make foreclosure a public issue, and failure to develop an ideology that could effectively frame this issue played additional parts in explaining this missing movement.