The Great American Foreclosure Story
The Struggle for Justice and a Place to Call Home
By: Paul Kiel
Narrated by: Gregory St. John
Length: 2 hrs and 39 mins
4.0 out of 5 stars (7 ratings)

Failed to add items

Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.

Add to Cart failed.

Please try again later

Add to Wish List failed.

Please try again later

Remove from wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Adding to library failed

Please try again

Follow podcast failed

Please try again

Unfollow podcast failed

Please try again

Try for $0.00

Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.

Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.

Access exclusive sales and deals.

Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Great American Foreclosure Story

By: Paul Kiel

Narrated by: Gregory St. John

Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $2.99

No default payment method selected.

Add payment method

Switch payment method

We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method

Switch payment method

Pay using card ending in

Switch payment method

By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Editorial reviews

Since the foreclosure crisis began in 2008, nearly 4 million Americans have lost their homes. Foreclosures, as author Paul Kiel points out in his riveting The Great American Foreclosure Story, "is failure". How did America allow failure on such a grand scale?

Performed as an impassioned but reasonable plea by Gregory St. John, Kiel’s piece of long-form reportage uses one homeowner, Sheila Ramos, as a vehicle through which listeners may have a firsthand experience of foreclosure’s horrors. In one year, Ramos went from a three bedroom house with her three grandchildren to squatting in a tent outside city limits. The Great American Foreclosure Story is a nightmare of predatory lending, denied loans, and government failure, and is a significant contribution to understanding American experience today.

Publisher's summary

ProPublica’s mesmerizing and groundbreaking look at the national housing crisis, told through the lens of one woman whose story came to exemplify it.

Sheila Ramos’s story mirrors the lives of millions of Americans who have lost their homes since the beginning of the housing crisis in 2007. The Great American Foreclosure Story details with clarity and empathy the road that led Ramos and so many like her toward financial ruin. Once the owner of a small business and a home, Ramos fell on hard times. Predatory lending and denied loan-modification applications eventually sent her and her three grandchildren packing, leaving behind their house in Florida and winding up in a tent outside of Ramos’s faraway hometown.

Alongside Ramos’s story are additional investigations by ProPublica reporter Paul Kiel and his colleagues Olga Pierce and Cora Currier documenting the systematic failures at banks, mortgage servicers, and government watchdogs that have exacerbated the country’s most severe foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression. Drawing from whistleblower testimonies, extensive homeowner databases, and a trove of underlying data, The Great American Foreclosure Story is a comprehensive and unrivaled look at the housing crisis, and its continuing human toll.