While President Donald Trump is scrambling to try to fix all of the economic problems he’s caused with his own policies, many American families may be heading toward a disaster. And the proximate cause may end up being not what the administration has done, but what it’s not doing.

In October, foreclosure starts were up 20 percent compared to the year before, according to numbers from ATTOM, a real estate analysis firm. Moreover, the rate has been rising for eight months in a row. Because it can take banks as many as three months to start the foreclosure process, these cases aren’t caused by momentary blips from the government shutdown. These are continuing signs that American families have been struggling to pay their bills all year.

None of these numbers have risen to Great Recession levels, but the fact that they are following years of record lows in foreclosures is a bad sign, pointing to a crisis over the horizon. Averting such a calamity isn’t easy in most instances. This administration, however, is not even trying.

Some of the most worrying signs involve, as the saying goes, “location, location, location.” The states with the highest foreclosure rates over the past few months include Florida, Nevada, South Carolina, and Texas. These are states that saw a huge uptick in home prices and sales throughout the pandemic, before the Federal Reserve Board started to raise interest rates to calm runaway inflation.

One of the reasons the first creases of this disruption are starting in these locales is that private home insurance is becoming increasingly unaffordable in some of these states, and families, in turn, are struggling to make their monthly payments. At the same time, home prices are falling relative to where they were during the overheated market in 2020 and 2021, so buyers can’t sell their properties to get out from under ballooning costs. “It’s a good example where you have........

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