The scenario is all too familiar. Person buys home. Person can’t afford home. Bank forecloses. Property sits vacant and unattended. Eyesore is created. Sheriff’s sale ensues.

Madison County has been plagued by this scenario in recent years and, particularly, in recent months. A July 6 report in The Herald Bulletin focused on Elwood, where almost 7 percent of owner-occupied homes were in foreclosure at the start of July. About 400 homes sit vacant in Elwood, according to city building commissioner Tom Doan. That’s a distressing percentage in a city of just 2,508 owner-occupied residences.

Other local communities are suffering, too. On July 1, almost 8 percent of Pendleton’s owner-occupied homes were in foreclosure, and Anderson was at about 5 percent. The problem, of course, isn’t limited to Madison County. It’s a nationwide epidemic.

Some foreclosures would be difficult to avoid, when jobs and pensions are being lost. The only solutions to these cases are better and more secure jobs — which points to the importance of aggressive countywide economic development. Other home-mortgage defaults are the result of irresponsibility on the part of the lending institution and/or the homeowner.

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have developed strategies to help homeowners in danger of defaulting and to crack down on predatory lending practices.

McCain would enable live-in home owners to trade burdensome, unconventional mortgages for manageable mortgages, while creating a Justice Department task force to investigate and prosecute fraud and other abuses in the mortgage industry.

Obama would create a tax break for those who owe on mortgages that would dole out $5 billion, mostly to folks who earn less than $50,000 annually. He would spend $10 billion to provide counseling for home owners and to work with state government and local organizations to head off foreclosures. Obama would also create a Federal Housing Administration program to encourage lending institutions to convert variable-rate and sub-prime loans into traditional fixed-rate mortgages.

The candidates’ proposals both have merit, but to enact them would create great expense for taxpayers.

The answer in Madison County, for now, is more dependable, good-paying jobs and an ethical approach by all lending institutions to provide manageable mortgages and counseling.

Owning one’s own home is a large slice of the American Dream. Losing one’s home is a nightmare recurring far too often in Madison County.