For it was a Hobbit hole, and that means Comfort

I find that a very weird question. You doubt that replacing "you just lost your job *and* your mortgage payments are suddenly a lot higher" with "you just lost your job but your payments will be lower for a few years" would help? Economy recovers, many of those people get jobs, and they're better able to make payments from that point on. I don't understand what you find doubtful about this.