July 26, 1992

The court official who supervises child support in Grand Rapids, Mich., described a 26-year-old local man who had fathered eight children with five mothers. "Before you condemn him for moral laxity," said the official, William D. Camden, "look what he did for these women." "He gave each one of them a safety net," Mr. Camden said, referring to the welfare the women and children can receive. "They will have a steady income and full medical coverage until their kids are 18.

Late in the 80's, when foreclosure rates began to rise on apartment house loans made by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, or Freddie Mac, the agency nervously halted its multifamily loan program. That made it difficult for many landlords to find the financing they needed to sustain and operate their buildings. Owners in New York City were particularly affected becausethey had been major users of Freddie Mac financing.

FOR the first three months, Elaine and Jerry Feldman were hopeful. After five months they were starting to despair. Fourteen months after Mr. Feldman lost his job as a finance director for an office supply company, they were simply numb, Mrs. Feldman said. Now, 18 months later, Mr. Feldman is still out of work. The family is losing its Hamden home and Mrs. Feldman is earning what she can working in credit collections "to put food on the table." Recently she decided she wanted to help people who were going through what she was so she founded a support group for spouses of the unemployed, often an overlooked piece of the unemployment puzzle. "There are a lot of different kinds of support programs for the person who is unemployed, but the spouses and the families are going through as many emotions and frustrations, if not more," Mrs. Feldman said. "What I wanted other people to know is that they are not alone, that the range of feelings that they feeling are not wrong. Our group is a safe place where women can say what they feel."

In the spring of 1988, the Matrix-Churchill Corporation, an obscure Ohio company owned by the Iraqi Government, approached a California company with a lucrative proposition: Would it go to Baghdad to build a $15 million factory to make fiberglass for state-of-the-art shower stalls and fishing rods? Glass Incorporated International of Covina, Calif., set to work building the plant even as the State Department, displaying ignorance of the Commerce Department-approved project, was warning that the Iraqis should not be allowed to obtain just such technology.

FROM the window of the Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce office on Lake Avenue here, Joan Flatley, the chamber's executive director, can see the historic Carousel Building across the street. For the first time in several years, the wide, windowed doors of the ornate building are open again. The building was designed in the 1920's by the same architects who designed Grand Central Terminal in New York.