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.
My Mom and Dad had eight children, and it was the American dream for them to be able to buy this house in a better part of the neighborhood where we didn’t have to be surrounded by gang violence and crime. My parents were married for 64 years before my Mother died. They spent most of their life in that home.
EMC requires that we do payments through Western Union, and I had just become my Dad’s power of attorney for making those payments. This past November I had a serious burn accident. When I got out, I paid $1,400, a little bit more than the $1,300 and change that was my parents’ original payment. I had told EMC that I was paying over the amount, but it wasn’t until the next month when I went to make another payment that they told me last month’s $1,400 was never accepted.
I called EMC and asked what was going on. EMC told me that $1,400 was an improper payment and it was a default on the note. When I went to make my third payment, I was told that nothing had still been accepted. A few days later, I was calling around to get to the bottom of this and found out that our house had already been sold! I was horrified and devastated, and my Dad is devastated too.
How is it possible to have sold a house within days of our first negotiation? My parents have lived here for more than 45 years. It’s not right to have lost the house over a technicality or mis-communication between EMC departments. Not once did they tell us that we were in danger of losing our house or that our house was being auctioned.
I haven’t really talked to my kids to see how it’s affected them. But it has affected me because I’m supposed to be the man and protect this home. Now, so far I’ve done that, but my back is up against the wall in a situation I can’t do anything about. The only thing I can do is straighten out what’s in front of me - trying to keep this house as a roof over my family’s heads.
Not only have I lost my house, car, and savings; I have lost my country. I got sick, my insurance wouldn’t cover me and canceled my policy. I have nothing left and had to move to Mexico so I could afford to live. There are a lot of these stories in Mexico. This goes beyond Wall Street.
A greedy father has thieves for children - Serbian Proverb
Can we trust the banks? I guess we are leaning the answer to that question - or we will soon enough. As part of the Fighting for Our Homes Campaign, we documented the story of Gaila, who is being foreclosed upon by wholly-owned JP Morgan Chase subsidiary, EMC Mortgage. Gaila said an eviction notice was posted on her property this past weekend - while the supposed ‘freeze on foreclosures’ was in effect. In Gaila’s case however - betraying the ‘freeze’ is a minor offense compared to the havoc JP Morgan Chase’s EMC is wreaking across the country.
As it turns out - EMC has quite the track record. Along with Bear Stearns, they paid $28 million to settle with the FTC on charges of unlawful mortgage servicing and debt collection practices in September of 2008. They are featured on a site called the Ripoff Report, where there are 261 complaints about EMC Mortgage, including customers being penalized for being “late” when they weren’t, repeated phone calls, rude treatment, no help with mortgage modifications and numerous other problems. We also saw news reports about how EMC treats its customers, testimonials from customers, and even firsthand accounts from former employees.
So now, in addition to using TARP money to buy jets, throw parties, redecorate offices and bailout the NBA before lending money to struggling small businesses and helping homeowners (the purpose of the TARP funds), it looks like the greedy fathers of the financial industry in America are looking the other way as their wholly-owned subsidiary children continue to rob us blind.
In 2006, I was single and had lived in apartments my entire adult life. My lease was up at my current apartment and I was influenced by a number of people to by a home. I was making $32,500 a year as a program manager for an adolescent drug rehab facility. I had no savings for a down payment. I was finally convinced by a friend who had been in the mortgage industry that this was a great investment and as a first new home buyer, I could qualify. I did qualify for $175,000. I knew that there was no way I would ever afford the payments, so accepted $100,000. No balloon. 2 months later in August 2006, I found out I was pregnant. I knew that my one bedroom condo would not be sufficient. I waited one year and put the condo on the market and by that time, the market had crashed. My $100,000 single bedroom condo is unsellable and now in 2009, it is worth $72,000. Married and with a toddler, we all live in a 1 bedroom condo. We make $85,000 a year and to walk away would kill our credit.
We are responsible Americans who are victims of this greed. I have a toddler who runs into walls because we can’t leave. When I worked in rehab I used to work for extra money at a friend’s mortgage company. I purged files. In 2002, I asked him how he could justify giving a family who makes less than $75,000 a year a loan for $300,000 dollars. His response was this, “It’s not my home to lose.” I saw the greed then. Why didn’t Washington? It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the market would crash. Please help this country. We are in trouble and greed and apathy will be our death.
It was just six years ago that Olive Thompson purchased a home in a quiet working class neighborhood on Long Island with a mortgage from Option One. Her story is similar to hundreds of thousands of Americans who now face the very real possibility that they will be evicted from their homes. Throughout the country the foreclosure rate in 2008 skyrocketed. In the first two months of this year there have been more than 10,000 foreclosures in New York state alone.
Perhaps more striking than the foreclosure epidemic is just how easily it could have been avoided. Thompson discusses her predicament and what she plans to do if she’s issued an eviction notice.
President Obama delivered a fantastic speech last night. It’s tone alone will go a long way toward reassuring a nation mired in economic crisis. And amazingly, there were many moments of bipartisan applause, like when Obama tackled corporate greed: “I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assistance they receive, and this time, they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer. This time, CEOs won’t be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.”
This was music to my ears, but as Robert Scheer astutely pointed out at The Nation, the problem Obama had in discussing regulation to fix our financial woes is that many of his top economic advisers, including Lawrence Summers, were responsible for gutting the regulatory system that helped cause this mess in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, Obama’s speech was strong and hopefully it will symbolize a fundamental change in thinking from his economic team. But I’m just glad we have someone like Senator Bernie Sanders to help Obama make good on his demagoguery.
The Independent Senator from Vermont says we need a new Wall Street. He wants to confront the culture of greed head on, get rid of the CEOs of these corrupt financial institutions, and establish a much stricter regulatory process. Sanders has been a vocal critic of TARP spending from the beginning, and last month he called for the congressional TARP Oversight Panel to expand its focus and dig into the causes of the financial crisis, using subpoena power to expose the roots. Sanders’ vigilence and frankness, coupled with Obama’s rhetoric last night, is what gives me hope.
I want to help! It is crazy out there and homeowners are being fed a bunch of BS! As usual, when there is money to be made the attorneys step in and steal the business, overcharge, and lie. Then, you have the department of Real Estate making new laws and regulations that do NOTHING. I could tell you the reasons, how the crap hit the fan, and how to fix it in a heart beat. Is everyone in Washington really that stupid or are they BSing the American homeowners? Probably the latter!
Yesterday, the first activist in a civil disobedience campaign to resist foreclosure was arrested in Baltimore. The campaign, launched by ACORN earlier this month, aims to draw attention to the foreclosure crisis and ultimately allow people to save their homes. The question is whether activists and home defenders can help affect policy and whether cities will begin to adopt moratoriums on home foreclosures.
Who’s ready for cramdown? Congressman John Conyers sure is, President Obama seems to be, and now Speaker of the House Pelosi wants to bring a housing bill to a vote this week that would empower bankruptcy judges to modify mortgage terms for borrowers on their primary residences. As David Dayen (aka Dday) explains, “This is an important provision, which most economists believe will be the best tool homeowners can have for them to stay in their homes, and for lenders to agree to loan modifications.” Dayen and Rep. Conyers, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, discussed the importance of cramdown as part of Brave New Films’ Fighting for Our Homes campaign.
Conyers has long been a champion of cramdown. With someone facing foreclosure in our country every 13 seconds and 8-10 million Americans in danger of losing their homes, this legislation would effectively “level the playing field,” as Conyers put it. It would allow bankruptcy judges to consider the unfair circumstances of a mortgage, while enabling those homeowners who have been victimized by predatory lending practices to be able to deal with their lenders. All the while, it would stick to the wealthy elite and those in our government who have resisted cramdown, since until now, only secondary and tertiary properties and assets qualified to have the terms rewritten by a bankruptcy judge.
