New America Media, partnering with ethnic news organizations across California and the Washington, D.C.- based Investigative Reporting Workshop, announces the launch of FACES OF FORECLOSURE -- REPOSSESSING THE AMERICAN DREAM, a multi-media project documenting the human fallout of the foreclosure crisis in the Golden State and elsewhere. (Two of 12 interviewees declined to be photographed.)

Project Summary

With over 1.2 million foreclosed homes in the last three years, California leads the nation in foreclosures. Yet we know little about the fate of those who lost their homes. Unlike the 400,000 Oakies made homeless by the Dustbowl who were immortalized by John Steinbeck in the Grapes of Wrath, we have no narrative to capture the human fallout of the foreclosure crisis in the Golden State, let alone elsewhere.

We start this series with a dozen profiles by ethnic media reporters and NAM staff. Photographs by award-winning photographer Joseph Rodriguez and video by Cliff Parker, plus an overview of the California housing meltdown by Ngoc Nguyen.

Kat Aaron, with the Investigative Reporting Workshop, and Mary Kane, a 2011 Alicia Patterson Fellow, take a close look at Maryland's foreclosure mediation program, and how the foreclosure crisis is affecting the country's wealthiest majority-black county.

Translations are available in Spanish, Chinese and Korean. Over the coming months, we will continue to publish portraits and investigative reports as part of the series.

This content is free for you to use on condition you link back to the project's partnering website in your creditline (New America Media and Investigative Reporting Workshop).

Support for this project comes in part from grants to NAM from The Ford Foundation, The Overbrook Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Additional support for coverage of California governance and policy issues comes from the James Irvine Foundation.