Below is the fourth installment in a five-part series, Too Little to Save, in which the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) highlights a family and describes their struggles with foreclosure.

Ms. Suarez is a single mom who has a toddler and two ten-year-old twins, one boy and one girl. They live in southeastern Texas and have lost their home because of a medical emergency. Bureaucracy at the bank was a major point of frustration for Ms. Suarez:

[The bank] didn't check the paperwork I submitted when I requested people to help me keep the home, because they were supposed to send me some papers―papers I have never received. I didn't even receive a letter in the mail on their behalf telling me that the house would be foreclosed. Two weeks before they took away my home, I talked to them and they told me to wait because the paperwork wasn't ready yet, I mean, they still needed a final decision. And all of a sudden, they leave a letter at my door [telling me to leave the house].

The Suarez family moved several times after they went through foreclosure. The poor conditions added to their challenges:

[M]y children were asking what's going to happen...whether we're going to have a stable place to live...An apartment may be unclean; sometimes there's a lot of garbage. Sometimes people drink outside the apartments. I mean, many things like that...they don't have anywhere to play. The space is more limited.

Ms. Suarez expressed concern over changes in her son's allergies after the foreclosure in the new apartment:

[M]y ten-year-old boy suffers from allergies. He's allergic to mold, many things, also things like trees. He's allergic to many types of trees. My son has been suffering more from allergies. I have to take him every other week for an allergy shot.

The instability of not knowing where they would be going to school was particularly difficult on Ms. Suarez's children. Ms. Suarez described her daughter as more distracted in school. She also noted that her children could no longer participate in extracurricular activities because she would not be able to pick them up from school.

Looking forward, Ms. Suarez had mixed feelings on the American Dream and whether homeownership was in her future:

Well, the American Dream was, like they say, crumbled when I lost my home. But I would like to have the chance again to buy a house.

As of December 2009, approximately 4.5 million homeowners were at least 90 days delinquent on their mortgage or in foreclosure. The Suarez family had a medical emergency that triggered the dominos leading to their foreclosure. The loss our nation has sustained as a whole from this crisis will only be compounded by continued foreclosures. While the American Dream flounders, we should keep in mind that we have hardly exhausted our foreclosure prevention options. Decision-makers must revisit solutions, such as mandatory loss mitigation, which have proven to help families hold onto their homes when possible.