The Flip Side Of The American Dream

Dean Reynolds is a correspondent for CBS News.

The man's home is in Plano, Il., a good 90-minute drive from where I was, but I was glad I went as it turned out. James Yaccino met me at the door of his house -- a resigned expression on his face.

"It is what it is," he told me when I asked how he's bearing up. His five-bedroom home in a sprawling subdivision is no longer his. A bank notice whipped in the wind from his front door when I crossed the threshold.

What got me about Yaccino was his resiliency. Divorced, he told me there was a part of him that was happy about this turn of events because he had met a new lady friend and things were looking up socially. But he has a long way to go before things really get better.

"You know, I'm almost poverty level right now," he said. "I never thought that would ever come."

Yaccino has packed up just about everything he owns and will put it in a public storage unit.

"I'm basically homeless now," he said as he scanned his cluttered living room. He told me he will probably live for a while at his business, a collision repair shop. But that business is failing and it will be only a matter of time until he is literally out on the street.

His house has five bedrooms and a garage, a fireplace, and a nice yard on a quiet street. The house cost him more than $300,000 when he bought it, but he was simply unable to keep up the payments when business dried up. He wasn't one of those who went for the dubious mortgage either. He had a standard 30-year plan. It didn't matter. No income, no payments, no payments, no house.

Now it's being sold for around $150,000.

"The realtor who was here that was selling my house (for the bank), says that `it's not just Lakewood Springs, or Plano, or whatever else. It's every Lakewood Springs all over the country.'"

His home is located in Kendall County, one of the fastest growing in the country, with a population that has doubled since 2000. But the recession changed everything about this subdivision and many others. Kendall County is now the foreclosure capital of Illinois. One out of every 26 households here received a foreclosure notice during the first six months of this year. I thought about what that must mean to all those families who moved to places like Plano whose great distance from downtown Chicago translated to affordability -- at least once.

I thought about all those kids pulled from schools. And all that incomprehensible uncertainty that must darken their young lives, to say nothing of their parents.'

After I'd done my work at his house, James and I shook hands and said goodbye. I wished him well, got in my car and drove home.

By Dean Reynolds:
Special to CBS News.com