Residents paying the price at the pump, at stores and at home

Costs force financial adjustments

Gas prices have increased to more than $4 per gallon. Food prices rose 6.9 percent between January and April, after rising 4.9 percent total in 2007, according to the Consumer Price Index. Bread prices alone have increased 1.5 percent, which is 14.1 percent higher than the same time last year. Milk prices also rose .9 percent last month and the index for butter and margarine are up 7.8 and 6.5 percent.

To cope, some people have been forced to re-strategize their grocery lists.

‘‘You eat more sandwiches,” Adams said. ‘‘You buy stuff you know will stretch. I cut up chicken and make it into several meals. I drink more water.”

Nancy Wenzel, 54, of College Park shops for herself and her husband and has started cutting more coupons and buying smaller portions of food.

Wenzel has cut down on the number of vitamins she buys and her trips to the organic market, opting for vigorously spray-washing vegetables she buys at the grocery.

‘‘To eat healthy and not out of a package can be an expensive trade-off,” Wenzel said.

Wenzel has also been buying less meat and using less soap when doing laundry.

She and her husband never eat out. Recently, she was going to pick up Pizza Hut pizza for dinner, but instead stopped by the grocery and got ingredients for mini-pizzas.

For some, even that drive to the restaurant can get expensive. As of June 9, regular gasoline cost 3.99, plus cost $4.13 and supreme cost $4.23 per gallon at the Exxon Station on 7545 Landover Road.

While filling his tank, Brian Gray of Bryans Road in Charles County said rising prices forced him to quit smoking and begin using the Metro to get to his iron work job in Washington, D.C. Gray drives 25 minutes to the Anacostia Metro Station and rides to Metro Center.

‘‘I wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning to make it to work by 6,” Gray said. ‘‘That’s rough.”

Gray said it costs $97 to fill his Dodge Durango SUV with $4.13 plus-grade gasoline. Gray said his car gets 10 miles to the gallon but ‘‘it feels like two miles,” and he sees no relief in sight.

LaRhonda Gough of Landover said gas prices put a dent in her bank account but have been worse for her husband, a truck driver. Gough said it cost her husband between $900 and $1,000 to fill his truck with diesel fuel and travel as far as Pennsylvania. Gough said her husband, who was also in school, left his job two and a half months ago when prices for diesel were as high as $4 a gallon. She said now they’ve reached $5.

As far as regular gas prices go, Gough said she may also need to make some changes for herself.

‘‘I might have to do less driving, do more things at home, invite people over,” Gough said.

But Gregory Hines of Landover said complaining about the prices won’t help. Hines switched from driving his Ford Econoline van, which costs $50 to $60 to fill up, to his Jeep, which costs about $35.

‘‘[It’s] just been business as usual for me,” Hines said. ‘‘I have a van I don’t drive that much. I just kind of deal with it.”

To find less expensive gas, Web sites such as www.gasbuddy.com and www.fueleconomy.gov allow residents to type in their zip code into a search engine to locate the cheapest gas station last sighted.

As the economy slumps, Prince George’s homeowners are also seeing an increasing number of foreclosures. In the first quarter of 2008, there were 3,310 county property foreclosure events compared to only 450 in the first quarter of 2007, according to RealtyTrac.com, a Web site that lists the country’s foreclosures.

In an effort to help residents keep their homes, Housing Initiative Partnership, Inc., a nonprofit developer, doubled the staff of its housing counseling program, which provides help to homeowners under the threat of losing their homes. On average, HIP sees about 32 people a week.

Mosi Harrington, HIP’s executive director, said the most important thing homeowners can do to avoid facing foreclosure is to act early.

‘‘The No. 1 problem is that they will come to us having missed at least four payments,” she said. ‘‘If they’ve made no payments ... and they don’t have any money saved up, it puts them in a much less sympathetic situation from the lender’s perspective.”

Harrington said HIP counselors try to work with homeowners and lenders to form some type of compromise, but it’s not always possible.

‘‘The lenders often aren’t very cooperative,” she said. ‘‘We help [homeowners] land a little softer.”

In April, Dels. Victor Ramirez and Jolene Ivey, both Democrats representing District 47, hosted a community forum in North Brentwood that educated about 50 residents about foreclosures.

Housing counselors, attorneys and other professionals gave free consultations to anyone who may have been having problems paying a mortgage.

‘‘In my district and in our county we have a crisis. Whether you’re going through it or know someone who is going through it, you’re affected,” Ramirez said. ‘‘If the value of your neighbor’s house goes down, it affects everyone.”