Eight million people are at risk of losing their homes because Wall Street abandoned responsible lending practices to gain short-term profits. The housing crisis is not just a problem for families facing foreclosure - it's a problem for every homeowner in America. As long as foreclosures persist, home values will keep going down, and everyone loses.
We need your help. Have you been affected by the housing meltdown? Foreclosed on? Underwater? Record your story, or the story of a friend, family member, or neighbor, and send it to us. You can also add your written story along with a photo for the map. Then, watch the video stories of the families, mothers, fathers, and children who have lost, or are losing the place they call home.
If you were to make a pie chart showing the amount of attention given to the banking part of the financial crisis — both by the government and by the media — and the amount of attention given to the foreclosure part, the catastrophe being faced by millions of American homeowners would barely rate a sliver.
But we are facing nothing less than a national emergency, with 10,000 Americans going into foreclosure every day and 2.3 million homeowners having faced foreclosure proceedings in 2008.
When we put flesh and blood on these numbers, the suffering they represent is enormous and so is the social disintegration they entail.
For a small sample, check out Brave New Foundation’s new site, Fighting For Our Homes, where you can see video of people doing just that. People like Debra from Pennsylvania who, due to health care costs, is facing foreclosure on her home of 33 years or Penny from Texas who has been pushed to the brink of homelessness as the result of costly repairs necessitated by Hurricane Ike.
Housing is a big issue, and like other big issues such as health care or education, both sides of the political spectrum like to take credit for it. Both George Bush and Democrats supported increased homeownership, Bush through his “ownership society” and Democrats through programs to make housing more affordable and available to low-income and minority families.
Of course, when housing becomes a political liability, as it is now that the real estate bubble has popped, blame gets thrown around quickly.
It’s sometimes hard to untangle right from wrong. Without a doubt, a good number of real estate speculators took advantage of rising housing prices to turn a quick buck - as the New Yorker this week vividly portrays. But mortgage lenders made a lot of risky bets using bait-and-switch tactics to prey on the dreams and ignorance of their customers. And those subprime loans were then bought up by greedy Wall Street investors, all without oversight from a government asleep at the wheel.
As part of Brave New Foundation’s Fighting for Our Homes campaign, stories are available from people who’ve lost or are losing their homes all over the country, with the option for visitors to add their own stories. It’s a powerful testament to the greed of mortgage brokers and Wall Street, and a sad reminder of how important financial literacy is to social justice.
If you’re a Wall Street executive who drove your firm into the ground and nearly capsized the U.S. economy, it seems like all you have to do these days to get a multibillion dollar bailout from Congress is put your hand out.
But if you’re like Guillermo San Pedro, a hardworking truck driver in Los Angeles who fell victim to a predatory loan and is at risk of losing his home, you’re on your own.
Eight million people are at risk of losing their homes because Wall Street abandoned responsible lending practices to gain short-term profits. The housing crisis is not just a problem for families facing foreclosure - it’s a problem for every homeowner in America. As long as foreclosures persist, home values will keep going down, and everyone loses. No Wall Street bailout will fix that problem.
We’re collecting stories from people all over the country who have been hit by the housing crisis so we can show what’s really happening on Main Street: while Wall Street takes hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to pay for lavish executive bonuses and luxurious office furniture, homeowners at risk of foreclosure still aren’t getting any relief.
We need your help. Have you been affected by the housing meltdown? Foreclosed on? Underwater? Trapped in a predatory loan? Do you know anyone else whose life has been turned upside down by the collapse of the real estate market? Record your story, or the story of a friend, family member, co-worker, or neighbor, and send it to us. If you have a video camera or webcam, then please send us your video. You can also add your written story along with a photo we can post on our interactive map.
We have already heard too much from bailed out banks. Their corporate greed clearly knows no bounds as they continue predatory lending practices after taking tens of billions from the government, which they failed to use to jump-start economic recovery. And now we’ve heard from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who rolled out his controversial Financial Stabilization Plan today that will devote $50 billion to help dam up the flood of foreclosures drowning our economy. Who have we not heard from?
How about the 2.3 million Americans who faced foreclosure proceedings last year? How about the 860,000 people whose homes were repossessed by lenders? How about the millions more out there right now struggling to renegotiate their mortgages with banks bent on reducing lending, restricting loans, and lying about conditions? Those are the heartrending stories we haven’t heard yet, but that’s about to change.
Today, Brave New Foundation is unveiling its newest campaign: Fighting for Our Homes. The website enables anyone affected by the housing crisis to tell their tale in their own words, either by recording it on camera or writing it down and submitting it with a photo of the house in jeopardy. Watch as people from around the country give accounts of their nightmarish ordeals. These stories fill up an interactive Google map symbolizing the toll this economic meltdown has taken on Main Street homeowners, reminding us of the consequences of irresponsible lending and corporate malfeasance.
Last Wednesday, a miracle happened. More than 30 people showed up at 6AM in front of a neighbor’s house to do one thing: save it from foreclosure. Martha and Eddie Daniels, tenants in the house in Oakland, California, were about to be evicted because their landlord had been taking their rent, but not paying the mortgage. The sheriff was coming to put them out, and the Daniels were in danger of joining the millions of families who have lost their homes in this crisis. But the community, working with ACORN members and staff, came together to say, “Not this time. Not here. Not now.”
ACORN members rallied their neighbors, spoke with local media, including one radio station that broadcast live from the home, and flooded the Sheriff’s office with calls urging compassion and forbearance of the scheduled eviction. Meanwhile, ACORN Housing Corporation worked furiously behind the scenes with the lender to negotiate a stay on the eviction, which successfully came through.
This is one story from the front lines of America’s economic meltdown, a crisis which contains one issue above all others at its heart: foreclosures.
How do you know when your bank is standing in the way of economic recovery? Well, take the following quiz. Your bank took $45 billion in bailout funds and:
a) Blew it on an overseas bank investment, DC lobbyists, corporate jets, executive bonuses, and a lavish Super Bowl party worth $10 million alone.
b) Announced it would lay off 35,000 workers while refusing to provide adequate health care for the rest of its 212,000 employees.
c) Asked participants on a conference call to donate large sums of money to vulnerable anti-union Senatorial candidates in order to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act.
d) Blamed the financial crisis on dead mothers.
e) All of the above.
Sadly, for Bank of America, the answer is “e” as in “egregious.” TPMMuckraker had a story Friday about Theresa Hatt, a Bank of America customer who died of cancer last month at 52. When her son, Paul Kelleher, called Bank of America to let them know, an estates representative asked if Kelleher intended to pay off the balance of his mother’s credit card. When he said he wasn’t obligated to, the representative said, “I know that if it were my mother, I’d pay it. That’s why we’re in the banking crisis we’re in: banks having to write off defaulted loans.”
Tired of the dumbed-down public debate about the stimulus package? Progressive economist Dean Baker offers a bracing take on the underlying housing bubble, why the stimulus package is a good start but not enough to kick start the economy, and why things are likely to get worse before they get better.
Sen. John Kerry is on fire. First, he drew the connection between the Vietnam War and the current quagmire in Afghanistan during Secrtary of State Clinton’s confirmation hearing. Now, he’s taking on the Republicans on the Senate floor, chastising the GOP and the Bush administration for creating the housing crisis.
“For nine months,” Kerry said, “they sat there while 10,000 homes a day were being foreclosed, and they allowed us to slide into where we are today.” So much for the Republicans’ ridiculous claims that a lack of housing relief was their chief concern with the stimulus.
Have the Republicans lost all sense of reality? In the midst of a crushing recession, our country is hemorrhaging jobs. According to Think Progress, the Labor Department reported we lost 598,000 jobs in January, and 1.8 million in the last three months. The livelihoods of millions of Americans and our entire economy are at stake, and yet GOP obstructionists are stonewalling President Obama’s economic stimulus plan and the nomination of Hilda Solis for Labor Secretary.
The Senate Labor committee postponed Solis’ nomination yesterday because of a recent USA Today report about her husband’s outstanding California tax liens. (NOTE: it was her husband’s auto repair business, not anything to do with Solis herself.) Though the tax liens have since been repaid, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) and his Republican cohorts are still delaying the confirmation vote, claiming they need to investigate Solis’ involvement with American Rights at Work (ARAW), a pro-labor non-profit. But this really boils down to the GOP’s inherent fears over the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill Solis co-sponsored in the House that would enable workers to unionize more easily and negotiate for equitable wages and benefits and safer working conditions.
As David Dayen wrote over at Calitics, “The American Rights at Work thing is a complete red herring. She was a representative figure for those who supported Employee Free Choice in Congress. She is not a lobbyist. She supported a bill. And so denying her free-speech rights seems ridiculous to the extreme.”
Solis might understand the needs of workers better than anyone in Congress. There’s no question she could help ensure President Obama’s plan to create 3.6 million jobs by next year actually happens. We must fight like hell to get her approved. Join this Facebook page and help confirm Hilda Solis now. Then, sign American Rights at Work’s petition to support the Employee Free Choice, where you can snag their Employee Free Choice widget for your own personal blog.
The reporters covering the stimulus have been so busy editorializing against it that they haven’t had time to pay attention to what Congress is doing. Last night Congress approved the Isakson amendment which gives $15,000 (or 10 percent of the purchase price, whichever is lower) to every person who buys a home in 2009.
Somehow, Isakson puts the cost of his tax break at just $19 billion. Let’s break the Washington rules and try a little arithmetic. Even with weakness in the housing market, it is still virtually certain that we will sell close to 5 million homes in 2009. The overwhelming majority would qualify for the full credit. So, we get 5 million times $15,000. That sounds a lot like $75 billion.
