Poor Addie Polk

Last Friday Afternoon I was sitting in my room reading various articles online. I perused over to cnn.com, where I like to find much of my political or world news and was pretty startled by one of the stories I found. This story was related to America's housing crisis, which has been at the forefront of American minds over the past several weeks. However, unlike most of the articles on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or the $700 billion dollar buyout, this one included a 90 year-old woman from Akron named Addie Polk and a long-barreled handgun.

"Addie Polk, 90, of Akron, Ohio, became a symbol of the nation's home mortgage crisis when she was hospitalized after shooting herself at least twice in the upper body Wednesday afternoon."

That's right. We now have 90 year-old women shooting themselves rather than getting evicted from their homes. Now, there is clearly much more to this story than that simple summary, but I think to see the true absurdness of this story you need to step back and view the surface. Somehow, in 2008, the only solution this poor woman could find to her housing problem was an attempted suicide (she did not die despite sustaining two upper-body wounds from the gunshots).

Who is to blame here? Is it the bank that first gave her the $45,620 loan in 2004 for her home that she had inhabited since 1970? Are the deputies that supposedly tried to evict Addie 30 times before Wednesday but left everytime she did not answer the door? Is America as a whole responsible for letting women like Addie fall into precarious situations like this without providing help? Or is Addie herself at fault, for not paying her rent or finding a payment plan or solution to her housing crisis outside of a handgun.

I think that everyone is at fault here for the escalation of this crisis. I obviously do not personally know Addie so I cannot comment on her actions outside of the fact that they seem pretty extreme and intense, but I have no personal knowledge of her life or her side of the story. It just seems absurd to me that something like this could happen to a very old woman that had lived in her house for twice as long as I've been alive. Could no other solution have been found? Really?

Now, Fannie Mae has announced that they have "halted" their action against Addie and that they were giving the house to her "outright." Great. Now, the bullet-ridden, 90 year-old Addie can return to her house of 38 years soon (90 year-olds recover quickly from bullet wounds right?) and we can all just move on. This doesn't send the message at all that attempting suicide to get out of your own personal housing situation is the right answer. Oh wait, it does.

This story of a old Addie Polk and her handgun epitomizes the absurdity of America's economy and the housing crisis today, and in some ways I fear the truly unbelievable stories that are sure to come in the future.

By the way, the Cubs may have come away losers last night for the 100th consecutive year, but one day we will come away champions...and hopefully Addie Polk will still be around to see it. Sadly enough, she just missed our last championship by 10 years (even though I doubt she cares about the Cubs right now).