Quantcast
BRAVE NEW FOUNDATION PRESENTS
 Home     Watch More     Read     Blog    
 
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.

Tag Archive for 'foreclosure'

Bank of America Still Screwing Troubled Mortgage Borrowers

Published
by
ZP Heller
on May 14, 2009
in Content
. Comments

If you think Bank of America is curbing their predatory practicies now that they’ve ousted Ken Lewis as chairman, think again.  Check out this ad I came across:

SHORT SALE!

Have You Had Difficulty Negotiating A Short Sale With Your Lender?

To approve a Short sale of your primary home, did the Lender make you sign a note or letter stating you must repay the difference between your loan and the sale amount, even if you never refinanced your home?

Did the Lender force you into Foreclosure and Bankruptcy?

We are a group of individuals (not attorneys) concerned with the way certain Banks have treated troubled borrowers and are investigating their practices, especially in light of the billions of dollars banks have received in TARP Monies. Some of these ill-advised business practices may even be illegal under California law, and costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

This is not a solicitation of business. We want to hear from you. Confidentiality assured.

Please call 1-866-981-8781 and leave a confidential message. Thank you.

What prompted this ad is that Bank of America has apparently been screwing over troubled mortgage borrowers who are attempting to negotiate short sales on their homes.  Borrowers who can’t afford to keep their homes have to work out a deal with their bank, selling short on their home at whatever the market value is currently in order to avoid foreclosure altogether.  Bank of America, however, is forcing these troubled borrowers to sign deficiency letters, meaning the borrower has to repay the difference between the sale price and the remainder of the existing loan on the property, which could easily force borrowers into bankruptcy.

What’s odd is that banks get far less in foreclosure than in short sales, so it would be in their best interest to work something out.  What’s more, Bank of America recently announced it was easing its policy on short sales, requiring 5 percent of short sale proceeds instead of 10 percent.  But this ad makes it sound like Bank of America is still having it both ways with troubled borrowers.

In California, Bank of America’s predatory behavior might be violating the law, since they are refusing to bless a short sale if the borrower does not sign a deficiency letter, even when the borrower’s home has not been refinanced.  If you know anyone, particularly in California, who has had difficulty negotiating a short sale, urge them to call 1-866-981-8781 and leave a confidential message.  Bank of America has already taken tens of billions in our taxpayer money through the bailout; we can’t allow them to continue screwing homeowners at every turn.

“Billions of dollars to the banks, yet we’re the ones that are homeless.”

Published
by
robertgreenwald
on March 1, 2009
in Content
. Comments

“We were trained to mislead borrowers,” says a mortgage broker in Orange County, California. “There were people who were club promoters or even drug dealers that found out it was more profitable to run a mortgage shop than to do whatever they were doing.”

Take a look at our video about the subprime mortgage lending racket.

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.

Sign our petition to let Congress know that you support Conyers’ bill, H.R. 1106. Then, call your Congressional Representative and ask him or her to vote for it.

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 banks have had their handouts. Now it’s time for struggling homeowners to be put first. Tell your Representative to support H.R. 1106.

An Ad to Run Against Dems Who Vote Against Cramdown

Published
by
Chris Bowers
on March 1, 2009
in Content
. Comments

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.

Continue reading ‘An Ad to Run Against Dems Who Vote Against Cramdown’

GRITtv: A Long Island Family Fights for Its Home

Published
by
GRITtv
on February 26, 2009
in Content
. Comments

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.

GRITtv: Home Defenders

Published
by
GRITtv
on February 25, 2009
in Content
. Comments

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.

Frances Fox Piven, a Professor at CUNY and the author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, Pat Boone, President of ACORN NY, and C. Nicole Mason, Executive Director of the Women of Color Policy Network at NYU, discuss the civil disobedience campaign and its potential impact on public policy.

Congressman Conyers Gets Ready for Cramdown

Published
by
ZP Heller
on February 25, 2009
in Content
. Comments

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.

My Mother and I Don’t Leave

Published
by
Bertha Lewis
on February 23, 2009
in Content
. Comments

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.

Continue reading ‘My Mother and I Don’t Leave’

“There Has To be Some Justice For Main Street.”

Published
by
Christy Hardin Smith
on February 18, 2009
in Content
. Comments

The folks at Brave New Films talked to Rep. Marcy Kaptur and economist Dean Baker about the TARP, Wall Street and regular folks. As Rep. Kaptur said, somewhere in the economic mess, “there has to be some justice for Main Street.”

Dean Baker lays things out on the table:

Certainly I can understand people being very upset at being forced out of their home. The government doesn’t appear to be anything to help homeowners, they’ve gone to great lengths to help banks — the banks that got us into this, and very often under false pretenses. As Rep. Kaptur has said, representations that were made to Congress before the passage of the TARP were not accurate, were not honest.

Most importantly…I’ll just mention that the Federal Reserve board had the authority to directly buy commercial paper from non-financial companies. The reason why this is important was it was argued before they passed the TARP, that the economy was shutting down because…other companies couldn’t get the money they needed to meet their payrolls and pay their bills.

Well, it turned out that the Fed always had the authority to simply buy their commercial paper so that they would have that money. And they began doing that only after Congress approved the TARP.

So this is really dishonest on the part of the Fed. And this is the sort of behavior that you could certainly understand people being outraged about: that we’re helping the banks, but not the people who are losing their homes.

Continue reading ‘“There Has To be Some Justice For Main Street.”’

It’s Time to Treat America’s Homeowners as Well as We’ve Been Treating Wall Street’s Bankers

Published
by
ariannahuffington
on February 17, 2009
in Content
. Comments

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.

Continue reading ‘It’s Time to Treat America’s Homeowners as Well as We’ve Been Treating Wall Street’s Bankers’

Assigning Blame for the Housing Crisis

Published
by
jasonrosenbaum
on February 12, 2009
in Content
. Comments

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.

Continue reading ‘Assigning Blame for the Housing Crisis’