'How do I save my house?'
Financial crisis hits many where it hurts the most
Debate about this financial crisis can make it seem as though there are no ordinary lives involved, only the dueling interests of two abstract characters.
"Wall Street Greed Hits Main Street," read one headline at Politico.com.
Or another, from the Wall Street Journal Online: "Does Wall Street owe Main Street an apology?"
In the town of Spencer, though, very real Wall and Main streets actually intersect. And several Massachusetts cities, including Fitchburg, Gloucester, and Worcester, are home to Main and Wall streets of their own. Visits to a few such thoroughfares, in Charlestown, Quincy, and Middleborough, confirmed that, in the real world, the pain of economic uncertainty is hitting home for people everywhere.
"I just talked to my accountant. I lost $78,000 in my stocks," said William Pizzurro, 69, of Charlestown, who dropped by The Cooperative Bank on Main Street on a recent weekday morning. "It took a long time to get that money."
In Quincy came this bottom line from Nicole Moisson, 24, who was out walking her dog, Sasha, on that city's suburban Main Street. The mailman passed by, and then Moisson, who said she has not been paying attention to the faraway fall of the stock market. Slow business, though, has shortened her shifts at Papa Gino's.
"Now, it's physical," Moisson said.
At its southern end, Main Street's leafy lanes are hemmed by historic buildings now home to such businesses as Element Day Spa, the Todd English restaurant Figs, and Otis & Ahearn Real Estate, where three advertised homes list prices of $1,539,000, $1,495,000, and $1,399,000.
Less than a half-mile north, Main Street is wider and more exposed, with subsidized housing on the west side, and small shops, including A1 Convenience, on the east. At a table near the back, next to refrigerators holding shelves of beverages, Barbara Goodwin scratched a few Cash Word lottery tickets, a gift from her son. Goodwin, 76, who lives in her own home on a fixed income, has watched the 401(k) she hopes to pass to her grandchildren fall fast.
"Unfortunately, people lost their homes," she says. "But I have to pay for that? Not my struggle, not my life, to give the little bit I have."
Gracie Saccardo, her hair pulled tight in a ponytail, turned with a soda in hand and talked of the risks of individual survival. "It seems like it's all over," said Saccardo, 47. "Not just me, but a lot of people."
Saccardo lost a job that moved her from private healthcare to Medicaid, and suffers heart problems that require her to use it. She was recently refused a school loan for her daughter, a college senior. She had already tapped 401(k) savings meant for retirement.
"I had to cash that in, pay all the taxes," Saccardo says.
Around the corner from Main onto Walker Street, past Speedy Wong's Chinese takeout, four short blocks lead to Wall Street, a single block with a tidy row of homes sheltered against a hillside. Just before noon, a dog barked near the Wall Street sign, and a lone man carried empty garbage bins back indoors.
"I'm an architect. Things slowed down for me a year and a half ago," said Tim Sheehan, 38, standing outside the wood-sided home in which he grew up, son of an ironworker. Sheehan says he may soon have design work as part of a multiunit residential project, but the builders are still searching for credit on the open market.
"It's going to make things worse, what's been going on," Sheehan said.
Main Street here is a quiet road with cars in driveways and lives tucked behind curtains. The sidewalk, though, is a throughway, and a bit past noon along came two young men with newly purchased Budweiser four-packs (at recently raised prices of $7 each) tucked under their arms.
"I work at
His friend, Kyle Daniels, also 21, is studying computer programming, and he hatched a plan right there on Main Street to survive what he expects to be dark days ahead. He said he's going to start buying gold.
"When all's down and you're going to get a loaf of bread and have no money for it," he said to French, "I'll have a pile of gold. And I'll go get euros for it, and be all set."
Two and a half miles northeast on Houghs Neck, Wall Street's two short blocks are home to houses huddled closely, and yards that show signs of family life and hard work. At its east end, the street opens toward Hingham Bay. Katherine Gibbons, 90, a resident of Wall Street for 51 years, sat on a bench with her daughter-in-law and watched the incoming tide.
"Let's face it," Gibbons said, "if you pay your way, everybody's good to you."
As a child, though, Gibbons lived through the Great Depression, when even hard work brought no guarantees. "It was pretty raw," Gibbons said. "People lost their houses and everything."
There is speculation in the neighborhood that one recently vacated house was lost to foreclosure. Gibbons criticized the television commercials she has seen in which lenders promise too-easy money. "They say that what goes around comes around, and I believe it," she said, "because you can almost see it coming back again."
Is there anything more Main Street than a two-story brick building with high glass windows and a bell that jingles when the door is swung open?
Behind that door are the offices of Adam Bond and Tom Dougherty, esquires. While steady traffic on Main Street idled orderly, the lawyers told tales of clients increasingly losing control.
"They're walking in all the time - 'How do I save my house, how do I save myself, etc.'," said Bond. As Bond was talking, the phone rang: A woman needed a lawyer because a collection agency was threatening to have her arrested. The debt: $7.50.
"Most of them that I've seen [earn] $40,000 or less per year, or are retired," added Dougherty. "I've seen credit card debt of $30,000 at 24 percent interest."
Bond, who has practiced securities litigation for 18 years, and still has an office one block from that Wall Street, in New York, analyzed why the financial markets are so unstable: "You've got people making ridiculous amounts of money based on one-year production. That short-term mentality is what has led to short-term profits for shareholders, but to long-term [market] explosions every couple of years."
Judy Bigelow-Costa stopped in the office to talk with Bond, chairman of the town selectmen. She had recently attended a leadership round-table about the growing heating fuel crisis. Her advice for coping with rising prices in the season ahead: "Start stockpiling. Canned goods, etc."
It is a 5-mile drive to a slight bend and a cranberry bog, where Wall Street begins. The wooded road weaves past homes that show evolving expectations of what financial comfort should bring, from older, smaller Capes to newer, bolder Colonials.
Midway along Wall Street, a green billboard advertises "Elk Run Estates," an "executive" subdivision of custom-built homes.
A paved road into the site was completed in 2006. More than a dozen lots wait, ready with utilities. The custom homes are listed for more than $500,000. So far, though, only two have been built; a foundation for a third was poured.
As twilight approached on a recent evening, the only visitor to the still-wooded sites was a flock of wild turkeys. 