Mom, apple pie and foreclosure

Paul Harris and his girlfriend, Tracy Cline, await the knock at the door, telling them it’s time to pack the last of their belongings and hit the road.

A year ago they became part of a trend that in 2008 is as American as apple pie and Mom: bank foreclosure.

Harris says he expects to be kicked out of his Howland Township home in May or June, when the house goes up for sheriff’s sale. “I just want to get out of this state,” Harris said, “but I don’t have the money to do it.”

The surprising thing is that foreclosure statistics from Mahoning and Trumbull counties show the crisis locally may have peaked in 2006.

Foreclosures filed in Mahoning County dropped 4.4 percent in 2007 compared with 2006 and 2.2 percent in Trumbull County. In the four years before that, they rose 35 percent in Mahoning County and 41 percent in Trumbull.

But ominously, foreclosure filings in January and February of this year are up 20 percent compared with 2007 in Mahoning County, 14 percent in Trumbull County.

Columbiana County, meanwhile, is at its highest point in five years. Foreclosures there were 530 in 2006 and 603 in 2007 — up 13.8 percent; they’ve been on the rise since 2004.

Read more in Sunday’s Vindicator and at vindy.com