您正在看的时事英语是:美高负债家庭面临升息之苦。 since early spring.

But for Stephen Black, a homebuilder here, the surge in home sales is a false signal. The customer base is already shrinking for his basic product, a two-story house with four bedrooms and a two-car garage on nearly a quarter-acre, a home currently priced at $215,000.

The buyers were families with $50,000 to $70,000 in annual income. Now they are increasingly bunched at the high end. The low end is pulling back partly because mortgages are more costly, Mr. Smith says, but also because in the past year the cost of building materials rose $17,000 and his company, Stephen Black Builders, has been able to pass along only $14,000 of that. Even the higher-income families have resisted paying the last $3,000. "Sales of these homes had been averaging 20 to 22 a year," Mr. Smith said, "but I think they will drop to 18 to 20."

One antidote to rising interest rates could be the recent surge in employment, and all the new income that will accompany the one million jobs created since February - but that remains to be seen. "The question really is, are the people who are leveraged with debt, are they the ones getting the jobs and income?" said Richard Berner, chief domestic economist at Morgan Stanley. Employment growth has been fairly robust in Lancaster, but even so, Mr. Smith is seeing fewer customers as they react to rising prices and interest rates.

Across town, in a rundown neighborhood, the working poor are just starting to show up in greater numbers at Tabor Community Services, a Lancaster agency that counsels those deeply in debt, said Michael Weaver, president of Tabor.

The "fragile low income," as Mr. Weaver calls them, do not tend to own homes, but those who do buy them through subprime mortgage loans, in many cases with adjustable rates. Apart from housing, nearly every transaction for these consumers involves interest payments in one form or another. Lacking enough income, they rent television sets, furniture and appliances, signing agreements that can adjust upward as interest rates rise.

Like their higher income peers, Mr. Weaver's clients often take loans to buy car, in their case, used cars. But they are loans of shorter duration and higher interest rates than the standard four- or five-year new car loan, now averaging 7.4 percent. They have credit cards, but at rates above 15 percent, which convert into much higher penalties when monthly payments are late.

"These are people who are maxed out on debt," Mr. Weaver said, "and their numbers are growing."