by Calculated Risk on 8/23/2008 06:49:00 PM

David Streitfeld at the NY Times writes about Merced, CA: In the Ruins of the Housing Bust

On a recent Sunday evening, an extended family of a dozen children, teenagers and adults is unloading a U-Haul into a house in a two-year-old subdivision called Summer Creek. The patriarch takes a break from wrestling with a refrigerator to explain he has abandoned his house a few miles away and is now renting this nearly-new five-bedroom.

The result, he says happily, is a drop in his monthly housing bill to $1,200 from $3,400. Somewhere a lender is recording yet another foreclosure.

"Somewhere a lender is recording yet another foreclosure."

In Merced, it is "Right here, right now!"