Well. even though the real growth in wealth is through the stock market many middle Class people saw their wealth as their homes. But, this isn't really true unless they are completely paid off. Many people are not educated enough to know this and so they lost everything because of Subprime loans and adjustable rate mortgages.
So, when the mortgage rates of interest went up some people could no longer afford their payments as they increased in an area and defaulted on their loans and had to move out of their homes. This lowered the value of other homes in their area. So, when people around them started to realize that their homes were devaluing they realized their mortgages were worth more than their homes and might always be so other people realizing this defaulted on their loans and this created a chain reaction of defaults throughout different areas of the country where some or even all people lost their homes during the Great Recession.
However, since then many people refuse to get adjustable rate loans because of the disaster it was for whole areas of the U.S. as well as to thousands and likely millions of homeowners who lost their houses and had to go bankrupt usually as well during the Great Recession. So, they lost any equity at all in their homes as well as their down payment and all their payments in this bankruptcy.
These people were some of the people who voted for Trump in 2016 to vent their rage on the system that bankrupted them.
However, I don't think this really helped these people because Trump was lying to them about what he planned to do so they likely are mostly worse off than they were before.
