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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009
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 FORECLOSURE FRONTLINES 
14

Don't Hate Me: I'm Just Here to Clean Up

Clearing the detritus of owners' dreams from bank-owned homes

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(Newser) – Cindy Reid doesn’t want you to think she and her boss—and boyfriend—are the “bad guys.” But it is difficult when her man is the one “you never want to see pull up to your house. He has eyes that go flat when you offer excuses,” because he doesn’t have time for them: He’s there to empty your repossessed home. “On paper, the business is pretty straightforward,” Reid writes. “What's not on paper is how you feel cleaning up behind a family's dead hope.”

Reid likes her work, particularly guessing about the owners’ lives based on what they’ve left behind, though the picture is often macabre. “The wedding album discarded in the garage while the used condom sits inside a nasty pizza box in the living room,” for one. “Dog carcasses in freezers,” or the “small child’s artificial leg.” Reid doesn’t feel sorry for the former owners, she writes on Salon, but she feels for the kids “whose school pictures I have tossed into a garbage bag.” Mostly, she just wants a fare shake. “We're just trying to clean up after others.”

Workers remove furnishings from a foreclosed house.
Workers remove furnishings from a foreclosed house.   (AP Photo)
Old furniture is left on property identified by a local real estate agent as a foreclosed home.
Old furniture is left on property identified by a local real estate agent as a foreclosed home.   (AP Photo)
A foreclosed home.
A foreclosed home.   (AP Photo)
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The crayons scattered in the bedroom with the peeling princess mural. Military uniforms. Family snapshots, more than you would think. Do I really want a visual of the people whose mess I am cleaning up? I don't care to study those pictures anymore. - Cindy Reid

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14 comments
VIEWING:
 
AOgan
Sep 30, 09 12:09 PM CDT
This is an interesting topic, but here's another write-up with no real meaning. Reply
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+10
JoeQ
Sep 30, 09 12:40 PM CDT
Yeah, newser makes the excerpts pretty short. Could have used a decent spell-check, too. Reply
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+4
IN RESPONSE:
I_hate_to_say
Sep 30, 09 12:50 PM CDT
Fare shake would be picked up by spell check-- that takes a human, and editors who give a ****.
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+1
IN RESPONSE:
I_hate_to_say
Sep 30, 09 12:51 PM CDT
would NOT ....
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+1
IN RESPONSE:
Reader64481089
Sep 30, 09 1:24 PM CDT
Actually I just completed reading the original article and what Newser took were directly from said article, blame any typo's or incorrect use of English on the fact it is an article written by the person doing the work, not a news report and it is a telling story of today's enviorment where so many are loosing their bit of the American "Dream" and that dream has turned into a Nightmare of people who no longer care about the plight of their neighbors or the ones who once resided in a happier home now taken by the banks that caused the crash in the first place, it is a story of leaches written by just another non caring leach.
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-2

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