Homeowners Welcome Attorney Generals to Town with Questions About Foreclosures

Sign of the times - Foreclosure — Image via Wikipedia

A National People’s Action report released in 2009, with Senator Dick Durbin, showed that 2009 was the worst year ever for foreclosures in Chicago, with the crisis deepening in middle class communities.

The New Bottom Line campaign, a coalition of grassroots community, faith and labor organizations is releasing an update of the research report for 2011, and will be acting to get the attention of state attorney generals, or AGs, to push for a strong settlement with the banks that is fair to homeowners.

On June 21st at 1:30 p.m., clergy, homeowners, and supporters will be at the Drake Hotel’s Grand Ballroom to welcome state attorney generals attending the National Association of Attorneys General NAAG summer meeting and to urge them to stand firm for a strong settlement agreement with the big banks they are investigating for mortgage fraud.

The New Bottom Line folks will pass out “welcome packets” that contain jail-bar and handcuff-shaped cookies to symbolize the importance of criminal penalties for bank executives, copies of a tourist map of foreclosed homes in Chicago and flyers listing homeowners’ demands. The theme of the NAAG summer meeting is “Maximizing State and Local Partnerships to Help Constituents.” Sessions will cover prescription drug abuse, familial DNA, human trafficking, smoking in the movies, DNA databases, unclaimed property, cybercrime and search engine abuse.

The homeowners and protesters think that AGs have spent hours in closed-door meetings with the big banks, and need to spend time listening to the people the AGs were elected to protect.

At 2:15 p.m., in front of the Drake Hotel, National People’s Action (NPA) – a member of The New Bottom Line campaign – will release their report on residential foreclosures in Cook County during the last 18 months. Among the findings:

More than 40 percent of all new foreclosure filings have been on fixed prime-rate loans.
The data indicates that the failure to enact effective loan modifications has allowed the foreclosure crisis to grow beyond homeowners with subprime mortgages who were affected first.
Cook County foreclosure “hot spots” – areas that have seen foreclosure activity on approximately 10 percent of a neighborhood’s housing units.
More than 40 percent of all recent foreclosure filings have been on typically prime-rate mortgages.

The report asserts that many of these recent foreclosures represent the failure of the major national banks (as mortgage servicers) to extend workable loan modifications to overburdened homeowners. The data supports NPA’s claim that the failure to enact effective loan modifications has caused the foreclosure crisis to grow beyond homeowners with subprime mortgages and to now impact a wider population of homeowners.

Additionally, the report finds that African-American and Latino neighborhoods are the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis with three times the volume of foreclosures and bank-owned property occurring in Cook County’s communities of colors.

Who: Clergy and Homeowners from Illinois, California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, and Washington State

What: Welcome wagon for state attorneys general followed by press conference to release NPA’s Cook County foreclosure report

When & Where: Welcome wagon at 1:30 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom; press conference and report release at 2:15 p.m. in front of the Drake Hotel, 140 East Walton Place.

Visuals: Jail-bar and handcuff-shaped cookies, tourist map of foreclosed homes, blown up foreclosure map, banners & signs with homeowners’ demands for AG action

About National People’s Action

National People’s Action (NPA) is a network of community power organizations from across the country that work to advance a national economic and racial justice agenda. NPA has over 200 organizers working to unite everyday people in cities, towns, and rural communities throughout the United States.

About The New Bottom Line campaign

The New Bottom Line campaign is a coalition of community organizations, congregations, labor unions, and individuals working together to build a movement that challenges established big bank interests on behalf of struggling and middle-class communities. Together, we work to restructure Wall Street to help American families build wealth, close the country’s growing income inequality gap and advance a vision for how our economy can better serve the many rather than the few. The New Bottom Line campaign includes National People’s Action (NPA), PICO National Network, Alliance for a Just Society, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), and Industrial Areas Foundation of the Southeast (IAF-SE) and dozens of state and local organizations from around the country.