Much thanks to Ed Carl, a supporter of LPAC, who provided the leads for this story.

October 24, 2007 (LPAC)--Over the past two days, local media sources in Delaware have been sounding the alarm: Delaware's foreclosure rate is rapidly accelerating. Wilmington, Delaware's, The News Journal, reported the scope of the local crisis.

Entire Delaware State foreclosures rose 15.5% in September, compared with September 2006.

Greatest Foreclosure rates in Delaware:
County   '07,third quarter  '06,third quarter    %increase
Sussex     170               97                  75%
Kent       153               104                 47%
New Castle 599               494                 21%

And if this wasn't bad enough, despite a foreclosure rate of only about 1.2% overall in the state (2,153 foreclosures out of 179,414 mortgages, as of June 30th), this is still BELOW the national average of 1.4%, including sub-primes, whose rate is 4.45%, while the national average is 5.52%.

ACORN, a national neighborhood advocacy group estimates, that, in total, including personal, business, property taxes, and home values, the total, combined losses for the state into 2009, will be a grand total of $65 million; surly an understatement.

As with most states facing a tidal wave of foreclosure, the general knee-jerk reaction is to resist the reality of a systemic, global, non-localized collapse, the type of which the Federal Congress seems to care nothing about. Delaware's governor did what most other governors do, setup up a "foreclosure task force."

"We don't know the extent of this problem yet," said Rashmi Rangan, one of the 12 task force members, "We don't know yet how to cope with individuals who are going to be in very dire straits with nowhere to go... and what will it take to stop this tide. ...This is the start of a problem that will be hitting us not just in '07 but in '08 and most likely in '09 before it tapers."

Sharp LPAC supporters should be able to answer Rashmi Rangan's very real questions.