For the most part, the mortgage crisis we've been hearing about has related to individuals and their home mortgages. But it was inevitable that a flagging economy was going to be more readily apparent in the commercial sector sometime soon. The Associated Press reports that shopping malls are feeling the pain, with a few properties going into foreclosure and more to soon follow.

It's not hard to envision how and why this is happening. Retailers have been struggling for most of the year, and the massive number of shoppers out on Black Friday probably won't be enough to save several big names. As retailers go out of business or file bankruptcy, the shopping malls are losing revenue, putting their survival in question as well.

I never like to see businesses close their doors or people lose their jobs, but I can't help but feel like some of this is necessary. Americans have been overspending for years, and maybe this is a fine time for consumers to cut back on their spending, even if it is not by choice. It's easy to see how in my own life, I've been buying more than I needed, and that cutting back is the wise thing to do. Short term there will be pain for retailers and their landlords, but hopefully this will be an opportunity for consumers to become more responsible with their spending and make some long-term changes in their financial behavior.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

From the recent resurgence of John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath," it looks like people in a recession are happy to be entertained by a tale of the Great Depression.

The 1940 movie based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Steinbeck has gained such popularity recently that from September 2008 to October 2008, rentals of "The Grapes of Wrath" on Netflix rose 10%, according to the Nov. 17 issue of Business Week Magazine. A theatrical play based on the novel is also out.

If you haven't taken a look at the plot since it was assigned reading in high school, it's worth another look today. (although now you can just rent the movie.) The parallels to today are strong. People are losing their jobs, unable to pay the mortgage and forced to move elsewhere to find work.

Saturday will be the first day of the month, and with it, another raft of homeowners will be turned out on the streets as their untenable mortgages expire. Expect the usual moving mayhem that happens whenever the first of the month falls on a weekend: a shortage of moving trucks, jammed unloading zones at apartment buildings, and a run on cardboard boxes.

One California company is doing a little something to make the difficulty easier. For this move cycle, UsedCardboardBoxes.com is giving free moving boxes to anyone who has lost their home in a foreclosure. The point, of course, is to promote the outfit's products, which are boxes that have been used, misprinted, or overstocked but are otherwise perfectly good.

The freebie pack of boxes, normally $38, includes sixteen boxes of various sizes, a roll of tape, a stack of packing paper, a marker, and a box cutter. To get that, you have to call the company (888-269-3788), provide proof of foreclosure, and pay for shipping, which amounts to $15. (Shipping is usually free, so you're getting about $23 worth of gimmes in this arrangement.) The deadline to apply is Tuesday.

As the foreclosure casualties from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition keep mounting, I keep wondering if host Ty Pennington is going to be hauled in front of a Congressional committee sometime soon like the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Of course, the hit ABC show is only trying to do good, but that's what a lot of lenders and brokers say as justification for the subprime mortgage crisis -- they were just trying to help people achieve the American Dream of home ownership.

At the very least, Pennington and his producers would teach a good object lesson on why the whole system went south, despite the good intentions of most of those involved -- and the greed and malice of some, and the ineptitude of others and the bad luck of some. If a good-natured reality show couldn't make it work, how could one have ever expected Countrywide to do it? I say put these guys on the hot seat and let them explain, rather than just keep rolling out episodes featuring ever-more-safe subjects who have been grilled endlessly by the network's lawyers, and who probably will be receiving extended assistance so more bad news doesn't keep leaking out.

The latest endangered homeowner is a case in point. Sadie Holmes was featured on the show in 2006 and was the beneficiary of a $400,000 home with an attached office for her business. The Florida-resident is now under a deep lien from the county sheriff for code violations and she may lose her home soon. She told the Orlando Sentinel, "I'm grateful for this building, but it's causing me too much stress and too much problems."

That's about sums it up -- for the mortgage crisis, the stock market roller coaster and our general financial situation in this country at the moment. And TV is no escape from reality in this instance, but instead is contributing to the problem.

When we heard late last week that Coldwell Banker was announcing a 10-day "sale" to start last Friday, you can imagine our skepticism. Here we were looking at the worst week in stock market history, and buyers are supposed to rush out their local open house listings?

If you go to ColdwellBanker.com and you can see which listings in your area are participating in the 10-day sale. I just looked and there is one house in my ZIP code that reduced it's price by $50,000 (slightly less than 10%.)

I had a chance to talk with Jim Gillespie, President and CEO, Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC, last week about the promotion.

Maybe taking pictures of celebrities and hanging out at celebrity venues doesn't make you one of the rich and famous after all. Annie Leibovitz, the famed photographer, is in serious debt, at least according to the New York Post. The paper reports that she owes $715,000 for things like equipment rentals, renovations, unpaid taxes and an aborted book project. She racked up these debts despite a reported $2 million annual deal with Vanity Fair, where she takes fabulous and controversial pictures.

As we are learning almost daily from celebrity foreclosure and bankruptcy stories, Leibowitz is hardly unique among the glitterati for getting into money trouble. The latest news from the Ed McMahon front, by the way, is that the deal to save his house is off.

Foreclosures aren't necessarily a bad thing. If a bank is willing to sell a house to some one like you for less than what the previous owner paid, the bank got what it wanted and you just got a great deal. It's only in areas of the country where foreclosed homes are piling up like dirty socks, with no buyers in sight, that you have rising crime, revenue dropping for the local governments, and the value of the homes dropping like a stone.

You've heard over and over about where the foreclosures are, but BusinessWeek took a look at where the foreclosures are getting bought up. While California and Nevada top the list, states like Connecticut and Massachusetts show that smart buyers are snapping up the deals in good neighborhoods. And even in places like Southern Florida, things will likely turn around in a year or two when all the excess inventory gets sold off at a discount.

If you are interested in foreclosure properties, but don't know where to start, check out the re-designed foreclosure page at AOL Real Estate. There's information on foreclosure laws, short sales and the foreclosure process.

Brett Widness is an editor with AOL's Real Estate channel and a licensed agent in Virginia.

You might blame the fact that houses in Detroit's drug war-torn neighborhoods are going for $1 (plus closing costs and thousands in back taxes) on the foreclosure crisis, but the reality is grimmer and probably more permanent.

Although the Detroit News featured the $1 sales on its front page, these kinds of giveaways have been common in East Coast cities for the last 30 or 40 years as a way to unload property with no market value in their current condition.

I took one of them 30 years ago from the city of Wilmington, Del., in return for agreeing to fix it up and live in it for three years. My oldest son's first word was "Ralph," the name of the plumbing and heating contractor who spent more time than his father at our perpetually under-construction home.

But at the end of those three years worth of dust and sweat, we sold the place and cleared $25,000.

I doubt that a property giveaway in Detroit would have such a happy ending these days.

My neighbors are usually pretty insular, limiting their contact to polite waves, but the housing crisis is having a positive social affect. Thanks to the economic angst, after 10 years on the block, I now know people's names.

This morning a group of neighbors were huddled at the corner, gossiping over the sale of a house on the next street for $150,000, a price not seen in this neighborhood for at least 20 years.

The son of the owner who died last winter sold it -- probably sight unseen -- to an investor who, at least in the good old days, would have slapped on a little paint, mulched the flower beds and made a fortune.

Despite the relative risk aversion most people associate with renting a house, the ever rising number of foreclosures has been hurting tenants, sometimes even harder than landlords. In most cases the tenants don't even know that the landlord has been failing to make payment until they receive the foreclosure or eviction notice on their front door. From there, the renter's rights vary from state to state with the protections generally being lackluster. To top off the need to quickly find a new place to stay as the bank takes ownership, many tenants are also out a month's rent and the security deposit.

One renter in Virginia lost $1,200 when her landlord was foreclosed on; a hardship which coupled with the loss of her roommate and access to transportation has left her 6 months pregnant living in a homeless shelter. Some states do provide protections which will allow the renters to pay the bank and live in the home until the new owner moves in but the extra time for tenants isn't usually long enough. In some other areas legal aides actually recommend living in the home rent free while the foreclosure process is completed in order to build up enough money for a new rental. No matter where you live the protections for renters from indiscriminate landlords are not good enough.

The House passed a measure last year which would afford more protection to renters in foreclosure cases but the measure hasn't yet been put into place. Congress needs to stop wasting time with credit card interchange fees and baseball steroid scandals and get on to passing something which I think we can all agree protects consumers. In these cases the foreclosures are especially sad because the displaced renters aren't the irresponsible ones; they have paid their rent and made the smart decision to not buy a home they cannot afford. Congress, quit carrying on about an energy plan for one day, leave your fly fishing trip early and get some protections passed. It'd be great if for once we could reward those individuals who made good decisions when it comes to housing.

It seems like we're going to see a lot more headlines like the one yesterday on one of the homes fixed up on Extreme Makeover ending up at a foreclosure auction (dramatically on the steps of the local courthouse in Georgia). Maybe it's only logical, given the mission of the show to fix up houses for those who can't afford to do so on their own. Many of these people are going to end up in further trouble, unable to afford their up-sized dreams.

Free Money Finance is hot on the trial of two more houses featured on the show that may be in trouble: one in Maryland and one in Oregon. In both cases, the families just had too much house to maintain and couldn't keep up. Being on the show may have actually exacerbated their problems. But isn't that the whole gist of the mortgage crisis right now? Banks extended pie-in-the-sky loans to people they know couldn't afford them, then jacked up the rates after they sucked the people into buying houses.

You'd think a guy pictured often with the likes of Paris Hilton would keep a hand on his wallet. But Scott Storch, a 34-year-old hip-hop music producer who helped launch the career of Christina Aguilera and Beyonce, and is seen around town with socialites like HIlton, is the latest entertainment name to fall into foreclosure.

Storch, who Palm Beach Post columnist Jose Lambiet estimates was worth $70 million as late as last year, is losing his $10 million Miami Beach home to SunTrust Bank. Besides owing a year's back mortgage on the 10-bedroom, 16-bath mansion, Storch also owes the electric company and a security company. Storch also had his Ferrari Scaglietti and his prized motorcycle, a Bones Bike, repossessed. So much for the high life.

Most people feel like they can't do anything to stop the overwhelming foreclosure crisis -- even if they do feel sympathy for homeowners. Buyers are going on bus tours of foreclosed homes, hoping to scoop up bargains. A Florida production company is making a foreclosure reality show.

Philadelphia Sheriff John Green, profiled today by the Wall Street Journal's Michael M. Phillips, decided he would try to do something on his own to keep people in their homes.

The sheriff's job is to auction off homes that the court orders. The judge was supposed to handle the merits of the case. But back in 2004 and again this year, Sheriff Green just stopped doing the foreclosure sales. He wanted to buy enough time to sit lenders down with homeowners to work out a solution. His campaign website says he has saved thousands of people from foreclosure.

The WSJ piece (subscription required) chronicles how his effort started as a lone desperado move, but then picked up the imprimatur of a council resolution -- facing questions about whether his actions had been legal at all, ever. Earlier this year home lenders didn't want Congress to allow bankruptcy judges to be able to rewrite the terms of mortgages, so you can imagine how displeased they were that a sheriff was taking matters into his own hands.

Neighborhoods across America are changing their landscape, as more homeowners default on loan payments and experience some form of foreclosure.

The welcome wagon generally comes with hot apple pie and wonderful well wishes, but what happens when your neighbor is forced out of their home? With around 1 out of 538 households in the United States experiencing some sort of foreclosure, I think there needs to be some way to say goodbye to your neighbors without causing them more pain and suffering.

For some it's all about lending a hand, and for others it might be as simple as avoiding placing politics into the situation. Regardless of the method, there's no reason to make goodbye as tragic as the loss of a home. Check out more ways to say goodbye here.

Photo by Jeff Turner

Animal welfare groups around the world have been noticing a new victim to the housing downturn and foreclosure crisis: pets. The lucky ones with responsible owners are turned in to local shelters. The most unfortunate dogs and cats are left imprisoned in locked homes with no food or water. They face a slow, tortuous death by starvation or dehydration.

The Human Society of the United States started noticing the problem in January. The same problem has turned up in England, the Daily Mail reports. A lack of money or landlord permission have both long been among the top reasons pets are turned into shelters.

Leaving a pet in the home, however, is a relatively new, shameful trend. The people losing the home leave a frantic animal inside as a kind of sick revenge on the company that foreclosed on them. In Cleveland the local NBC station reported that tenants leave nauseating conditions. Animal Protection League Director Director Sharon Harvey told WKYC, "animals are living in horrific conditions, rooms and areas filled with feces and urine. Sometimes they have to go in with masks because the smell is so terrible."

Someone facing foreclosure with no pet-friendly housing or relatives to turn to may get some help from local shelters or rescue groups. If you want to keep the animal, they may be able to work with you. If you don't they'll give your dog or cat the best shot at a new life. While the Humane Society doesn't give out grants to individuals, it just set up a program for local animal groups to get extra funding to help with the pet-foreclosure crisis.