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.
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.
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.
On Wednesday I wrote a piece on Huffington Post and another here at Open Left talking about the centrality of fixing the foreclosure crisis to any recovery from the economic meltdown. Since the toxic assets at the center of the meltdown are based on mortgages that are entering foreclosure at a rate of one every 13 seconds, we have to address foreclosure as a part of getting America back on its feet.
The Homeowner Affordability and Stabilization Plan (HASP), announced in Phoenix on Wednesday by President Obama, which will help up to an estimated 9 million families, is a good first step – and the first serious effort by the Federal government to confront the challenge. But just because there was an announcement does not lessen the urgency of the problem. We are still in a situation where four families every minute enter the foreclosure process. We believe there must be a moratorium on foreclosures until HASP is fully implemented.
In the extended entry I give a report back on ACORN’s actions on Thursday to create a sense of urgency around this crisis and help some families stay in their homes.
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.
The GOP and Fox News have been ganging up on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) like a couple of bullies picking on the scrawniest kid in the schoolyard–and they can only push that kid so far until he gives them a well-deserved bloody nose. Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) unjustly accused ACORN of receiving a $4.19 billion bailout from President Obama’s economic stimulus package. His false claims were echoed by Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) on Fox, who claimed this money was a “payoff” for ACORN’s activism in the last election. That was all it took for bloviators Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin to resuscitate allegations of ACORN’s voter fraud. They even blamed the low- and moderate-income advocacy group for the subprime meltdown, rather than discuss the banks actually caused this mess and have subsequently received tens of billions in bailout funds they continue to squander.
These cries amount to nothing more than fearmongering in the name of obstructionism, what ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis called “a complete fabrication of overheated partisan fever dreams.” As Congress Matters noted, the $4.19 billion was actually set aside for “neighborhood stabilization activities related to emergency assistance for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes.” In other words, any non-profit housing developer could bid on this money.
Here comes the bloody nose. Yesterday, the organization sent a letter to Boehner’s office and media in Ohio shooting down each and every accusation and attacking Boehner on his home turf, a district where more than 4,800 families faced foreclosure in 2008 alone. They also went after Boehner’s record of voting against the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 and the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act. Simultaneously, they’re asking everyone to contact their Senators and tell them to support the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a version of which passed in the House last week despite the GOP’s partisan rancor.
