Housing turmoil - Los Angeles Times
Here is a set of profiles of people who have been affected in various ways by the meltdown of the housing market. Homebuyers in the LA area were especially reliant on subprime loans because the prices were so ridiculously inflated. And of course there was the powerful myth that you can't lose money on LA real estate. People continued to buy overpriced homes they couldn't afford, with interest-only ARMS and other horrible, risky mortgages, because they were convinced the escalator would keep on going up forever and they could always sell at a big profit. Hard lesson. This is like the ENRON employees who left their pensions entirely in company stock until it was way past too late.

As foreclosures and default warnings pile up across Southern California, thousands of people are losing their homes because they can't pay their mortgages. Thousands more are losing their jobs or seeing their incomes shrink. Realtors, plumbers, loan officers, truck drivers -- the effects of the stumbling housing market are widespread and, by many accounts, growing.