Last year at this time my dad and I started talking about how housing prices were down and I should think about buying a house. It was time. I had worked hard to rebuild my credit after a divorce and bankruptcy. I had no debt. And I finally had enough saved for a down payment. Almost every house I looked at was vacant and either a foreclosure or a short sale, victims of the housing crisis and the sub prime mortgage mess.

After a couple months of looking I found a cute 1948 house that had been upgraded in the Oleander area of Bakersfield. It was my dream home. It was also a short sale, which I soon learned as a first time home buyer was a very long process. A short sale also meant I was negotiating with a bank and banks don’t negotiate like homeowners. The seller’s bank and I finally came to an agreement only to have the appraisal come in lower than the agreed upon purchase price due to the continuing downward spiraling housing market.

I waited four months for the seller’s bank, Countrywide, to get their paperwork in order so that my house could close escrow. During that four months I watched on http://www.zillow.com/ as the estimated value of the house I was buying continued to slip lower than the new agreed upon appraisal and purchase price. If the deal ever closed I would be buying the house for more than it was worth in the falling housing market.

The appraisal was only good for 120 days. One week before the appraisal expired Countrywide finally closed my deal. Coincidentally it was the same week that Bank of America finalized its buyout of Countrywide.

I moved into my new home July 4th weekend and as a homeowner I felt a new kind of independence. Independence that came with a price in this housing crisis as the home on the east side of mine sat vacant and the home on the west side of mine was about to be vacant as my neighbors were moving out, moving back east to live with their parents and turning their home’s deed over to the bank.

Soon after, President Bush signed the housing bill intended to rescue homeowners in fear of foreclosures. The housing bill also provided a tax credit for new homebuyers during this housing crisis. However, after a little digging I learned that the first-time homebuyer tax credit is a loan on your property taxes that has to be repaid after a couple years and will be added to your monthly mortgage payment. Nothing is free anymore, not even tax credits.

Not long after moving into my new home the housing crisis struck deeper, it affected my job. I’ve worked eleven years for a private sector civil engineering firm whose projects consisted mostly of residential and commercial development, subdivisions and flood studies. By the summer of 2008 the private sector residential and commercial development builders and projects were dying on the vine and developers were leaving the Central Valley behind with half-built subdivisions and empty unsold homes. People I had worked with for five to ten years were laid off as our company downsized in order to survive. We were not the only civil engineering company going under due to the housing crisis.

When my dad and I first talked of buying a home he told me a story about my grandma being afraid to buy a new home because she was afraid of what might happen to their home if grandpa were to ever lose his job. At the time I took the story as inspiration to empower myself as a single woman and buy a home. At the time I thought my job was secure. Now my grandmother’s story was coming true in my own life, my job was in jeopardy.

I didn’t want to become another victim of foreclosure in this housing crisis and not knowing if my job would even last through the summer I began an aggressive job search. I quickly learned a hard lesson in humiliation. For, in this economy twenty years experience and a degree were not valued or worth as much as I needed to make in order to pay for my new home.

The stress of working full time at a dying company, looking full time for a new job and not knowing if I would lose my home or even survive this economy affected my health in the form of severe headaches and depression. Functioning was difficult, writing was impossible as those of you who know my blog might have noticed it too fell to the wayside in this housing crisis and economy.

But I was not alone in this economy. My friends and family were suffering too. As gas and food prices soared, I watched my friends lose jobs, struggle to keep the electricity on, do side jobs to buy groceries, and family members retirement savings wiped out in the stock market crashes. Gone were the days of luxury day trips to Los Angeles or a night at the movies we had to worry about buying food.

Times are tough. And they aren’t getting any better. As banks continue to fail, the stock market suffers huge losses, the housing crisis continues to fall, unemployment rises, and businesses across the country are closing while the government and the Presidential Candidates debate whether we’re in a recession or not and economists compare the times to those of the great depression. I have to ask what does a government 700 billion bail out bill do for my family and friends? And where does the 700 billion come from? Are they printing up 700 billion over at the Federal Reserve to cover this bill? If so, could they print up a little extra for my family and friends? We’d like to have Christmas this year.

Two weeks ago I found a new job with a larger stable architectural firm in Bakersfield whose projects are municipally based i.e. schools and hospitals. This job comes just in the nick of time since my company will most likely be dead before Christmas. But in this economy a good stable job comes at the price of a 30% pay cut. Down the road in the future I can see this will be a good job and a good opportunity. But right now I have to figure out how to navigate this economy on 30% less income.

So when the media says this Presidential election is about the economy I believe it. This economy is what is weighing most heavily on the minds of the average American. We want to know how we’re going to survive this economy and housing crisis. I’m not sure either candidate will be able to fix the economy but I’m really tired of hearing about the millions of dollars spent on their campaigns while the rest of us are suffering through the housing crisis and this economy.

Someone please explain to the government and the Presidential candidates that the ‘housing crisis’ and the ‘economy’ aren’t just words to throw around in hard times or a Presidential election, they’re personal.