The number of people in Norwich losing their homes because they cannot meet mortgage or rent payments is soaring.
Staggering new figures have shown that the number of mortgage repossessions made at Norwich Crown Court has more than doubled in just 12 months, with the rise the second highest in the country.
Meanwhile, orders made against people who cannot pay their rent have also risen heavily.
The figures provide further evidence of the increased pressure families are feeling in the face of the credit crunch.
Between April and June this year the Norwich court ruled that 203 mortgage holders should have their homes repossessed, a process which starts if people cannot keep up their payments and lender or landlord takes them to court seeking to turf them out of their houses.
This was a rise of 131pc compared to the previous year.
For the year so far, orders have been served on 356 people, a 65pc increase on the same period in 2007.
There have also been 529 landlord repossession orders so far this year, up 38pc on the previous year.
Jude Wood, East of England regional manager for housing and homelessness charity Shelter, today described the rise as “staggering”.
She said: “At Shelter, every week we see more people in need of help with mortgage arrears. One year on from the credit crunch, the number of people being repossessed is rapidly rising and every day we are moving a step closer to the dark days of the last repossession explosion.
“The Government urgently needs to play its part to prevent thousands more families from losing their homes and provide the financial support troubled homeowners need to keep a roof over their head.
“Urgent action needs to be taken to prevent more people in Norwich facing the nightmare of having their home taken away from them.”
Andy Cobb, manager of Norwich and District Citizen’s Advice Bureau’s Debtline, said it had seen a big increase in people in financial difficulties and an increase in the number of people they are seeing who are facing repossession action.
He added: “But I can only guess at why there seems to have been a particular increase in Norwich. It might be because, historically, we have a fairly low wage economy, so people might have overstretched themselves when taking out mortgages, maybe a lot of people thought it was a good place to go for buy-to-let properties, or maybe we just had very few possession orders previously, so the increase looks more marked.
“The important message to get across is that people should not give up hope when action is first taken against them.
“Often when people ring us for the first time they are immediately prepared to hand their keys over to the lender or landlord and don’t realise the final decision can only be taken by the court.
“Mortgage lenders go to the courts as a last resort and there are other options, such as finding ways to make payments, which we can help them work through first.”
Already the ongoing credit crunch has had a big impact on people living in the city, with house prices crashing and at the same time the cost of living soaring.
Several firms have also made redundancies in light of, or to stave off, a cash crisis.
John Drake, chief executive of YMCA Norfolk, said, because his charity helps people aged 16 to 24, the majority of people he sees were not likely to have lost homes.
But he added: “We don’t get the wife and husband who have lost their homes, but we might see their 19-year-old son, who has nowhere to go because they have downsized their home.
“These young people might be told they have to leave home and get a job, but the jobs are not there, so they drift from the rural areas into Norwich.
“This recession is a subtle poison. It seeps into society. There is a link between economic hardship, leading to family breakdown and then social displacement.”
One example of the anguish of facing repossession is Mr B, who wants to remain anonymous. He owned his home for four years and lived there with his daughter, aged 13, but in 2006, he became very ill, suffering a breakdown, and became unable to work.
He contacted his mortgage lender and explained his situation to them, asking for some leniency for a six-month period while he got back on his feet and back to work.
He felt fairly confident he would be protected because he had taken out Mortgage Payment Protection Insurance (MPPI) through his lender.
Despite writing a letter to his lender and insurance company explaining his situation, Mr B received no help from them or opportunity to negotiate.
He became very depressed and disillusioned, not knowing where else he could turn to for help. In December 2006 he received his first summons from the mortgage lender for possession of the property.
He said: “I felt like no one was listening to me when I was in trouble there was absolutely no one to help me. It was very frightening and I felt like I was going to die.
“These may seem to be strong words, but believe you me, when someone lives through a year of trauma, anxiety, stress, depression, despair and the sheer nightmare, day in day out, of the devastating prospect of losing one’s only home, it makes you feel like you would rather be dead.”
In January 2007, Mr B got in touch with Shelter and they were able to help him get an adjournment on the possession order. However, because the situation was so stressful and had already escalated to such a scale, he could no longer continue to fight to keep his home and it was repossessed in August 2007.
The tally of people losing their homes in Norfolk could have been even worse, had Norwich not been selected for a pioneering project which aims to stop council tenants from being forced out onto the streets.
A scheme, run by the Norwich County Court, Norwich City Council and Norfolk Community Law Service (NCLS), was piloted in Norwich to head off court appearances.
Before being summoned to a court hearing, people with council rent arrears are invited by the court to attend a meeting with an advisor from the law service.
The scheme has been successful, with 70 per cent of the people invited for meetings attending and the majority managing to renegotiate their repayment, and the Government is considering rolling it out nationwide.