COLORLINES/TUMBLR

Today, the two story house sits empty, but through the window a ladder and can of paint can be spotted in the living room—signs that the new owner has been here working. Hines, now in her mid 50s, looks inside and sees her lost future. “They were going to grow up,” she says of her two nieces, “and this was going to be the house for them, from one generation to another… the one that was going to be passed down in the family.” Two years ago, Hines, her two sisters and a niece watched as bailiffs came to the house to throw out their belongings and padlock the doors. “I never imagined we’d be in this place,” she told me through tears not long after the foreclosure. “I moved into that house when I was 18 years old. It was our base.” (via Race and Recession: Foreclosure Losses Still Mounting - COLORLINES)