Rosa O'Neil would like to know what happened to her neighbors. Over the past decade she's watched as people she's lived next to for decades, disappear one by one, until she lives nearly alone on her Irvington, New Jersey street.

Subprime lending was especially popular in low-income, minority neighborhoods during the boom. Bankers were encouraged to push subprime loans even to people they thought would default. In return they were paid commissions seven-times higher than for ordinary loans.

"What the [1967] riots didn't do to Irvington — subprimes did," Don Baldyga says from behind the wheel of his silver Subaru wagon. Baldyga is a real estate developer with the non-profit Episcopal Community Development (ECD) in Newark, and says that as bad as things are here, they are going to get worse.

"The shadow demand is immense," he says, referring to the 50,000 homes his organization believes are headed into foreclosure. "Most of these homes here," he says, throwing his right hand across the Subaru, are owned by Deutsche Bank. Hundreds of these homes. It surprised us, but I guess it shouldn't have."

Baldyga says that the 36 foreclosed homes ECD recently purchased were owned by 19 separate banks, representing 19 individual subprime pools. "A lot of these people were in their homes for 25, 30, years with their mortgages totally paid off." Baldyga explains.

In the boom years they'd get calls urging them to refinance. When the owner would say "No," that they could never repay the hundreds-of-thousands being offered; lenders would explain how they would just refinance again the following year to pay it off. People bought it, and now they're gone.

(Obviously, no one forced anyone to refinance. But it's clear that many people who took out new loans had no idea of the risks they were taking.)

With the help of federal funding, Baldyga, and ECD are doing their part to rebuild the neighborhood. They buy the foreclosed homes using grant money, fix them up, and sell them at reduced rates to qualified buyers.

Each buyer must agree to remain in the home for 15 years before selling or refinancing. To afford the mortgage payments on the larger homes, ECD cordons off affordable apartments within the residence to bring in rental income.

In some homes, the owners will live virtually payment free, assuming they keep tenants in the apartments above them.

Baldyga spent the day driving me around Irvington, showing me what he's seen, and what he imagines replacing it one day.

At the end of the tour, on the way back to Penn Station, I ask him what he sees as the story of it all, "what does it all mean to you," I ask.

He sighs, puts both hands on the wheel and staring straight ahead, says, "Foreclosure is people. Not just numbers and empty homes."