We’re just existing, not living! Mortgage Stress and the Concealed Costs of Coping with Crisis Richard Waldron & Declan Redmond School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin, Ireland richard.waldron@ucd.ie Forthcoming in Housing Studies; DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2016.1224323 Abstract Following the financial crisis, an extensive literature has examined the vulnerabilities facing mortgagors in default and foreclosure. However, in addition to these oǀeƌt Đasualties of the crash, many households are struggling to meet their mortgage payments by enduring severe cutbacks to their quality of life. The edžpeƌieŶĐes of these uŶƌeǀealed Đasualties of the financial crisis and the coping strategies they employ to respond to mortgage stress remain under-explored. Drawing on survey data of Irish mortgagors (n=433), this paper examines the impacts of mortgage stress upon ƋualitLJ of life aŶd ŵoƌtgagoƌs ĐopiŶg stƌategies to ƌespoŶd to theiƌ fiŶaŶĐial diffiĐulties. The fiŶdiŶgs suggest that mortgage stress affects a broader range of households than previously considered; mortgage stressed households adopt a range of expenditure, employment, finance and housing- related responses; and more punitive responses correlate with greater mortgage stress levels, thereby providing a fuller account of the real cost of coping with the crisis impacts. Introduction Since 2007 financial and housing markets have experienced a period of extreme volatility, characterised by the collapse of national banking systems, falling property values and rising mortgage default and foreclosure rates 1 (Wolfson and Epstein, 2013). The origins of the crisis lie in the liberalisation and empowerment of finance capital from the 1980s and the creation of speculative asset bubbles in the property market to absorb over-accumulating capital and compensate for the lack of alternative investment opportunities (Harvey, 2010). Aalbers (2008) contends that the expansion of mortgage markets and the linking of global capital markets to local housing markets was a key facilitator of global investment strategies in which homes and homeowners could be exploited for financial sector gain. As banks cultivated an increased appetite for risk accumulation as part of profit- maximising strategies, a range of mortgage product innovations (e.g. subprime loans) were developed to extend mortgage debt encumbrance among low-income households and those with weaker credit ratings who traditionally were considered too risky to lend to (Immergluck, 2011, Wyly et al., 2009). As such, in countries most affected by the financial crisis, including Ireland, Spain and the US, a broader range of households were vulnerable to the impacts of the crash than ever before, and the most adversely affected are made up of a larger proportion of poorer households (Ronald and Elsinga, 2012). While renters have also been affected by the vagaries of the crash (Dewilde and De Decker, 2016), much of the housing literature has examined the economic vulnerabilities arising for mortgaged households, particularly the socio-spatial impacts of the concentration of mortgage defaults and foreclosures among US subprime borrowers (Schafran, 2013, Crump et al., 2008, Brown et al., 2013). However, for Forrest (2011, 9) this focus on the finite events of mortgage arrears and repossession only capture the oǀeƌt Đasualties of the crash. Households who are struggling to maintain their financial position, but who have not entered mortgage default, are often overlooked in the academic and policy literature meaning the full extent of the crisis impact remains under-examined (Botein, 2013). Additionally, the impacts of the mortgage crisis for quality of life remain under-researched, nor 1 In this paper, the terms mortgage default and foreclosure (US) and mortgage arrears and repossession (UK) are used interchangeably