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.
On Tuesday, Congress will vote on whether or not to level the playing field between the banks that caused the collapse of the housing market and struggling homeowners. Representative John Conyers has introduced legislation in the House that authorizes judges to require banks to reevaluate overpriced mortgages of bankrupt homeowners.
Conyers’ proposal is a simple, modest fix that will help keep hundreds of thousands of families in their homes. This bill is a win for every homeowner in America. By helping stem foreclosures, it will help arrest the decline in home values for everybody, not just those who are struggling to make payments. President Obama supports the bill and has called on Congress to pass it. The banks and the lobbyists that represent them oppose the bill with a passion.
These are the same banks that started this recession in the first place by hawking worthless subprime mortgage loans to naïve or unsuspecting borrowers. Joan Adams of Irvine, California lost her home to foreclosure, and is now living out of a motel by the airport. “There’s no one out there to help,” Joan says. “Billions of dollars to all the banks for bailouts for something they caused, and yet we’re the ones that are homeless.”
The House vote on “cramdown” housing legislation, which allows bankruptcy judges to re-value mortgages according to current market prices, swill take place on Tuesday. In advance of the vote, The Center for Responsible Lending has a useful chart up showing that 800,000 homeowners, or 10% of all American homeowners facing foreclosure,. could be saved from foreclosure by “cramdown” legislation. Among the 86 congressional districts represented by either a New Democrat or a Blue Dog, 143,672 homeowners are projected to be saved from foreclosure by cramdown legislation.
143,672 is a pretty big number. It is such a large number that, if the legislation does not pass, it would be pretty easy for organizations like ACORN to find multiple families from all 86 of these congressional districts whose homes could have been saved by cramdown, but which instead were foreclosed upon. Once people find these local families, it would be pretty easy for organizations like Brave New Films could get them on camera, and get them to say something like this:
Last year, I lost my home. President Obama supported legislation that would have let hundreds of thousands of families like mine save their homes in bankruptcy court. Sadly, Congressman X voted with Wall Street banks instead. We lost our home, even though Congressman X could have saved it. So, in this year’s Democratic primary, I am voting to kick Congressman X out of office.
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.
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