Hitting the Pause on Foreclosures

By Valeria Fernández
from Color Lines

Before she was evicted from her own home, Kendra Washington took a walk around her Detroit neighborhood. She found an empty home and decided to squat with her two children. “I refused to get my kids put out on the street,” said the single mother who moved into a vacant Housing and Urban Development house.
After government officials came knocking at Washington’s door, attorney Jerry Goldberg, a long-time civil rights activist, persuaded them in court that it was in the government’s interest to let Washington and her children stay. He argued that Washington had made improvements to the house and so maintained its value. Without her efforts, he explained, the house would have been vandalized.

Washington got to stay.

“In the 30s, there were organized committees all over the country, block by block. The sheriff would come and evict a family. After he left, they moved people back in. The moratorium was won on the streets.”
In the last year, Goldberg and his staff at Moratorium NOW!, a coalition of activists and union and religious leaders, have brought at least 50 cases to courts in Detroit on behalf of homeowners. They have been fighting to save homes literally one house at a time through picketing at the banks and legal action. Some of the people impacted are senior citizens with fixed incomes and also with medical conditions that have drained their savings. The houses have belonged to them for more than 20 years.

“We believe they have a right to a home and we defend their right to stay,” Goldberg said.

Some politicians agree. A new bill introduced in Michigan’s state legislature would create a two-year moratorium—making it the lengthiest moratorium in the nation.

According to Goldberg, in many of his cases, people have been able to stay in their homes because he showed that the foreclosure was violating federal law like the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA), which was approved last July. The law requires financial institutions to modify default mortgages when this will result in a greater recovery of their value than a foreclosure.

“We argued that the loan modification would add a greater value to the property than the foreclosure will,” he said.

In the cases of low-income homes insured by the Federal Housing Administration, Goldberg and his team have shown in court that the government hasn’t played by its own rules.

Homeowners in danger of being evicted are supposed to get the chance to stay in the house through a lease agreement. But many homeowners are finding their requests to stay in the home denied, said Goldberg. Instead, the Federal Housing Administration has been paying the mortgage companies the full value of the house after it foreclosed, he added.

They don’t always win in court though.

“When we don’t have good luck through the courts, we have good luck through the streets,” said Goldberg.

On at least six occasions, the coalition has picketed outside homes or banks just before people were about to be evicted. This is often the last resource when the actions can’t be fought in court because there’s no legal basis, Goldberg said.

On one occasion, a 78-year-old woman was able to get a new loan to stay in her home after the group picketed outside the bank Countrywide. The new loan allows her to stay in her home of 42 years.

•••

Washington made payments on her home of a decade for as long as she could after a foot surgery caused her to lose her $40,000 a year job. The lender wasn’t willing to lower her payment on the $150,000 mortgage. As her savings ran out, Washington watched homes in the neighborhood being sold for as little as $500.

Michigan has been hit by a severe economic downturn for the last decade. It has lost half a million, mostly union, industrial jobs in the last five years. The crisis struck Detroit before it did the rest of the nation, and the sub-prime market of predatory lending completed the job. In Detroit, the average medium sales price for a home these days is $6,237, according to data from Multiple Listing Services. One in every 137 homes in Michigan is facing foreclosure.

“Our business is to sell foreclosed homes,” said Carl Williams, chief executive of the Saturn Group. His real state company has sold at least five houses for $1 with buyers paying the realtor’s commission.

“When the properties get evicted, the homes are immediately stripped and vandalized, losing all their value, tearing down the fabric of the community,” said Goldberg.

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March and Rally - May 1, 2009

March and Rally
Friday
May 1, 2009
10 AM

Gather at W. Vernor & Woodmere (Patton Park), Detroit
March down Vernor to Clark Park for outdoor rally at noon

Initiated by Latinos Unidos

Lost your job? Losing your home?

Blame the rich, crooked bankers and mortgage lenders NOT immigrant workers!

read more

DEMAND:

* Jobs at a living Wage
* Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act
* Health care for all
* Housing
* Education
* An end to raids and deportations

People’s Summit June 14-17

By Kris Hamel
Detroit
Published Mar 7, 2009 6:59 AM

The Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions voted unanimously on Feb. 28 to call a People’s Summit in Detroit from June 14-17. Organizers will begin widespread outreach to garner endorsers and draw other organizations into building for the June activities. These actions will include a march along Woodward Avenue for jobs and housing and a tent city in Grand Circus Park of the foreclosed-upon, jobless, underpaid, homeless and all who struggle for social and economic justice.

The People’s Summit will occur simultaneously with the National Business Summit, sponsored by the Detroit Economic Club, taking place at Ford Field in downtown Detroit. Millionaire and billionaire capitalists, including the heads of ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Chrysler, Humana Inc., Ascension Health, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, BNSF Railway Co. and PVS Chemicals, will gather at this event June 15-17. The presidents of the National Council on Competitiveness and U.S. Chamber of Commerce will also be attending.

Calling it “a Gathering to Define America’s Future,” the business summit’s Web site states: “Participants will have direct access to ... top business, government and academic leaders and a voice in shaping the outcome of the discussion.” In order to have a voice, however, a registration fee of $1,495 per person is required.

Those who can afford this exorbitant registration fee will be putting their heads together to discuss “innovation and policy ideas in technology, energy, environment and manufacturing.” In other words, they will be strategizing on how to further increase their profits at the expense of the ever-shrinking middle class, the vast working class and the growing millions living in utter poverty.

These business tycoons will gather in a city reeling from rampant foreclosures and evictions, record unemployment, plant closings, mass layoffs, school closings, cutbacks, union busting and other forms of devastation.

President Barack Obama and cabinet members have been invited to this gathering. Will these business tycoons allow Obama’s economic stimulus plan to proceed? Will they create jobs at living wages? Will homeowners have real opportunities to avoid foreclosure? Or will the suffering and misery continue?

Only a mass struggle of those most affected by the capitalist economic crisis will turn the tide. The Moratorium NOW! Coalition organizers note that so far only the banks and mortgage lenders have been bailed out, to the tune of trillions of dollars of workers’ tax money—money sorely needed to rebuild the lives of the people.

Organizers hope that the People’s Summit will attract everyone struggling for social and economic justice, not just in Detroit and Michigan, but on a national level. Everyone involved in any progressive struggle is urged to organize for the June 14-17 event.

Kris Hamel is an organizer for the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evicitions. She can be reached at krisdetroit@yahoo.com

Bail Out the People NOT Banks

Detroiters Launch Campaign for Affordable Water

OUR WATER, OUR CITY

Let’s make it a law that the City of Detroit must make water affordable and stop shutting off the water of low-income people!

Join our petition campaign
Kick-off gathering: Saturday, March 7
10 a.m.-12 noon
Central United Methodist Church, 4th floor, 23 E. Adams (at Woodward), Detroit

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Michigan Welfare Rights Organization
23 E. Adams, 4th Fl.
Detroit, MI 48226
(313) 964-0618 www.mwro.org

TeleSUR Video: Crisis of Capitalism - Struggle for a Moratorium on Foreclosures in Detroit

Michigan Coalition for Human Rights presents Fighting Foreclosures, March 5 , Barth Hall

There isn't an area of the city, SE Michigan, or the nation that hasn't been impacted by foreclosures, but it has hit hardest in poor areas among African Americans and Hispanics, causing erosion in cities and suburbs alike. Come and learn about the causes of foreclosures, its impact on families, and what is happening locally to begin to stem the tide.

Won't you join us on :

Thursday, March 5th 7 p.m.: "Fighting Foreclosures" ,

Speakers: Vanessa Fluker Esq.
Jerry Goldberg Esq.

"Two of the area's fiercest defenders of victims of predatory lending.

Location: Barth Hall
St Paul's Cathedral, Woodward and Warren, Detroit
Lit, Secure Parking, driveway off Warren, east of Woodward

$5 Donation accepted.