There are thousands of things that are rough in life or that can be improved, yet one constant complaint I hear about startups nowadays is that they're solving web2.0 problems that move text or images from one screen to another.

To fix things, you first need to hear about the process, to learn intricate details about it, how people end up in these situations and what's at stake. Only then you can become passionate about solving issues that don't involve screens, keyboards and mouses. Do we know it's rough? Yes. Do we understand their issues and have ideas how to fix this? I doubt many of us do.

In my country, if you're late for 90 days with your mortgage payment, one specific bank transfers your debt to another entity which sends you a letter requiring you to pay the entire debt within 1 year or they'll foreclosure on you. I wouldn't have found this today if it weren't for this article. And maybe in the future, the dots will connect and this information will help me improve the lives of such people in distress.

That sounds suspiciously like you have 1 year to either get a new loan or live with zero rent which is not that bad of a deal IMO. Because, your underwater on your mortgage it's free rent, otherwise you should be able to either get a new loan or sell within a year.

In my country you're responsible with your full wealth for your debt (and there's no personal bankruptcy law - it applies only to businesses). They'll retain 1/3 of your salary until they fully recover the difference, if there's any left after the foreclosure.

Ok, that's far more harsh than I was expecting. Thanks, for the clarification the added background completely alters things.

Is it all right with you if you share what country this is?

What happens if you become unemployed during this time?

The country is Romania. A draft existed at one point last year ( http://iasiinvest.ro/information-in-english-/31036-personal-... ) but has been cancelled since then.

If you become unemployed and no longer have any assets, I suspect the debt still exists awaiting you to become employed again, but I'm not a lawyer.

No, its that, to a lot of us, this is a new part of the story that we've never heard before.

May I suggest picking up a newspaper from time to time? The Economist (which is actually a magazine that calls itself a newspaper) is pretty good too, although they don't tend to do the human interest type of things as much as real newspapers do.

If you haven't noticed foreclosure rates and done some thinking about what that meant in human terms, you were simply not paying attention, to put it very directly. (And maybe you have good reasons; you live in Singapore or something and don't care much about the US housing market)

I'll pass on reading paper news and wasting time flipping through things that don't interest me just to get a good story every once in a while.

Id rather consume news via sites like HN where I get interesting stories all the time and get to chat about it with the community.

> Id rather consume news via sites like HN

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

You can say that about every Reddit IAmA.

So be it then. That's when the upvote system takes over to filter in the good this community sees.

No, this is a community that has guidelines in addition to a voting system. It isn't Reddit.