Last week, the Obama Administration and 49 state attorneys general announced a deal with the country’s five biggest mortgage banks on a $25 billion dollar foreclosure settlement. Community organizers working with victims of foreclosure, including National People’s Action, have criticized the deal as a paltry “drop in the bucket” that will do little to help the millions of families who have lost their homes or risk losing their homes because of the negligence and abuse of big banks.
The deal will help about a million families refinance the principle on their underwater homes. Those who have already lost their homes because of bank trickery or illegal robo-signing errors? About 750,000 such families will get a one-time check of $2,000.
That’s right: In exchange for Wall Street ripping off your home and ripping off our economy, the banks will compensate you a whopping $2,000. But don’t worry. Here are some housing options that families who have lost their homes can use their generous $2,000 check to buy.
A Pre-Fab Shed
Available from Home Depot for $1,789. Shipping not included. And some assembly required.
Two “Luxury” Dog Houses
Available for $949 at Wal-Mart. Each one, though, is probably only roomy enough for one adult or child per structure.
A Used Car
On Craigslist in Peoria, Illinois, someone is selling a used 1995 Ford F150 pickup truck for $2,000 on the button. It has over 147,000 miles on it, but if you’re going to just park it and use it as a home, that doesn’t really matter. And there’s room in the truck bed for the kids.
***
Of course, none of these options include such luxuries as insulation or indoor plumbing but, hey, the banks can’t spend that extra money helping the victims of their reckless subprime schemes. They have multi-million dollar bonuses to pay! Sheesh…
From the Associated Press:
A 101-year-old woman was evicted from the southwest Detroit home where she lived for nearly six decades after her 65-year-old son failed to pay the mortgage.
Today’s poll:
[poll=2]
Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up. Bank of America is so eager to foreclose on the American Dream it’s actually foreclosing on itself. Really. One Boynton LLC owns a 21,552-square-foot office building in Boynton Beach, Florida (pictured). The company has a $7.5 million mortgage for the property through Bank of America. Apparently the mortgage, like many in America, is delinquent. So Bank of America, which just recently settled charges that it was foreclosing on the homes of military families, is foreclosing on the office building. Never mind that the primary tenant in the building is a Bank of America branch. None other than the Wall Street Journal wonders, “Next, perhaps CEO Brian Moynihan will foreclose on his mother’s house.” But really, given that BofA paid Moynihan a base salary of $950,000 plus $9.05 million in stock bonuses — in 2010 alone — getting rich by foreclosing on the American Dream across the country probably means Moynihan’s own mama doesn’t need a loan from the bank.
When I first arrived at Edda Lopez’s house, I wondered how this elderly woman lives on the second floor of her elevator-less home despite being wheelchair bound. After an hour with Edda, I no longer wondered. Edda is a fighter. She fought for her family and her way of life, persevering even after her home burned down and her husband died a few years later. And now, Edda is fighting Bank of America.
Bank of America services one out of every four mortgages in the United States and is responsible for more foreclosures than any other bank in the country. And now Bank of America is foreclosing on Edda.
Edda lives in Bronx, NY, on a tree-lined side street with playgrounds and parks nearby. You think it might be different, being in the big city, in one of the poorest parts of the nation. But Edda’s block looks a lot like the small towns and suburbs that speckle our country. You would feel right at home in her cozy living room or the wide front porch Edda’s husband once built with her sons.
When Edda’s husband died in 2005 and she lost her job in 2008, she still held on. Edda was approached by a mortgage re-financing company who promised to lower her monthly payments. But buried in hundreds of pages of documents were loopholes and scams. Edda was surprised to find herself an unwitting victim of predatory lending and a sub-prime mortgage. Her payments actually went up.
She tried again. Edda re-negotiated her mortgage with another, more-reputable bank and got her payments down to $2,101 a month, which she could handle. Everything was fine until, in early 2010, Bank of America bought Edda’s mortgage and announced her payments would be at least $1,000 higher. What? Edda called Bank of America and only then found out that they had rejected her modification and Bank of America considered Edda behind on her loan for failing to pay the higher amount all along. On the phone — and only because she called them — Bank of America told Edda Lopez that her home would be sold at auction on June 26, 2010.
To all those who blame the hundreds of thousands of families facing foreclosure for their predicament and argue that big businesses like Bank of America should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, in the spirit of “free market” capitalism and the American way, you need to meet Edda Lopez. Edda is just like the many other hardworking Americans, struggling to play by the rules and reach their dreams but repeatedly knocked down by cheating, greedy corporations. Since when did the American dream turn into corporate-only heaven?
You can watch a video about Edda Lopez and sign a petition to protect her home at http://showdowninamerica.org/edda-lopez. The community organization National People’s Action has made over 23 formal requests to meet with Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan to demand an end to unjust foreclosures for Edda and thousands of other American families. Today, Edda will at a vigil outside the $1 billion Bank of America Tower in New York along with her family, community leaders and clergy members praying that Bank of America does the right thing. It’s a sad day in America when hardworking families are reduced to praying for their livelihoods to the gods of big banks.
NEW YORK TIMES PROFILE
SOCIALIZE WITH ME!
TV DOESN’T PAY THE BILLS
Make a tax-deductible contribution via our fiscal sponsor, the Grassroots Policy Project
