The Human Side of Foreclosure

Rochelle McCray was waiting for the judge to call her name in one of the many Cook County foreclosure courtrooms on the 14th floor

of the Daley Center in April.

The oldest of her three children watched his siblings while their mother was called and represented herself in front of the judge.

She told him to be quite and check his little sister and brother who were sleeping in one of the chairs of the courtroom and in the stroller while she tries to fight for their home.

McCray is about to lose the home in which she lives with her children, ages 6, 4 and 1, because the owner of the house has been foreclosed.

McCray said she does not have a fixed income, and she is at risk of becoming homeless. She is not represented by an attorney because she doesn’t have the money to pay for one.

“I barely can afford the rent,” she said.

Nobody notified McCray that the house was about to enter foreclosure, so she’s about to be put out on the street, she said.

The original owner did not tell her the status of the house when she started renting, and now the bank wants her to leave. She said the bank has already evicted two people in the same building.

“They denied my house application, and now I do not have anywhere to go. It’s hard,” she said.

McCray said she is waiting to talk to a lawyer, but the free legal service where she applied for is too busy, and they could only schedule an appointment two weeks after her first hearing.

“I only get $690 [per month] to take care of me and my three kids. There’s no way I can do it,” she said.

The judge said he would not assign an attorney to handle McCray’s case and rescheduled her hearing for a week later.

After McCray’s case, the judge called Ramadan Ali, another renting tenant who is at risk of losing the house in which he lives because of poor communication between the owner of the house and the bank.

“I am representing myself, and that’s not a good thing,” he said after meeting with the judge.

Ali said he is representing himself because he has some knowledge of the legal foreclosure procedures and cannot afford a lawyer, but judges often ignore what he has to say, according to Ali.

“Sometimes you get a good judge. Sometimes you get a bad judge like I had a couple of weeks ago who did not listen to a word I said,” he said. “They really treat you like a rag doll unless you have an attorney.”

Ali and McCray are two examples of renters who have been uprooted by the foreclosure crisis, through no fault of their own. Their situations are aggravated by the fact that they go to court and cannot afford legal representation.

Joel Blumenfeld, an attorney and expert in foreclosure, said renters involved in foreclosure cases definitely have rights despite the foreclosure.

“Even if a rented property is sold at auction, the new purchaser doesn’t have the right to simply throw any tenants out on the street,” he said.

An association dedicated to defending renters in evicting cases is The Lawyers Committee for Better Housing (LCBH).

The committee offers different programs to help people who face the eviction problems.

In 2010, the Attorney of the Day Eviction Defense Program (AOD) program, one of the programs offered by the committee, accepted 335 cases serving 981 individuals and handled 53 cases in Chicago.

According to an LCBH survey, of those 53 clients who were at risk of displacement through eviction or foreclosure, 55 percent received additional time to move and 21 percent experienced a financial benefit such as rent waivers, moving expenses or direct payments.

Recently, the federal government has provided $1 billion in relief to homeowners in Illinois who are facing foreclosure, according to a press release issued in March from Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office.

The citizens eligible for the relief are borrowers who have lost their homes, homeowners who are still in their homes but at imminent risk of defaulting on their mortgages or behind on their mortgage payments and borrowers who are current on payments but underwater, according to the press release.

Meanwhile, the Illinois Supreme Court formed a special committee to help families cope with foreclosure. The court said that at the end of 2010, there were 70,000 foreclosure actions pending in Cook County alone.

While people struggle with the high costs of legal services, attorneys who specialize in home foreclosure frauds say renters as well as homeowners should always hire an experienced lawyer to represent them in court and take care of communicating with the banks.

“That’s a big problem. If you’ll be defending yourself, the banks are going to win every time,” said Blumenfeld.

He said a lot of people choose to represent themselves pro se (without an attorney).

“The problem with this course of action is that such pro se defendants often fall victim to the technicalities of the legal system since they are up against trained professionals representing the lenders,” Blumenfeld said.

Banks have attorneys who specialize in foreclosures, while some people do not even have access to a lawyer, he said.

The government does not provide attorneys because loans are considered civil litigation. However, there are a number of programs the state has enacted to help with loan applications, he said.

Blumenfeld said without a lawyer people are not going to win in this kind of court procedure because the foreclosure process is very technical and cannot be faced without proper preparation or specialization.

“People who are losing their homes can’t afford to pay. It’s better to be represented by an attorney in court,” he said. “If you’re not familiar with the process, banks can take advantage of a person’s lack of experience.”

Blumenfield said the advantages of hiring an attorney are multiple.

“If you are not represented by a lawyer, you will be pushed through the system as quickly as possible. Judges don’t want people out on streets, but their duty is to follow the law,” he said.

Blumenfield said foreclosure cases can take up to three years. When homeowners are represented by an attorney, the attorney can help them stay in the house and not get kicked out on the street with nowhere to go, he said.

Zachary Elman, an attorney with expertise in business loans, said there are clinics in Chicago that are sponsored by law schools, which offer highly discounted rates or even free legal services.

“I know in the Cook County court house you can go on the 14th floor and go to the help desk,” he said. “They have volunteer attorneys, sometimes law students, and they would go through your documents for free and give you their opinion, and they can direct you to the free legal services in the clinics, but I don’t believe there is a lawyer specifically there to represent you.”

Elman said the biggest challenge facing people who are about to lose their homes is the inability to communicate effectively with their lenders.

“We have people who come to us and ask if we can talk to the bank for them, try to get in touch with them,” he said. “The banks and lenders will lose paperwork all the time and that makes it extremely difficult for regular people to manage their loan effectively. So to me the biggest problem that is going on right now is just the communication with the lenders and the people who have the loans.”

Elman said one other problem is that the banks’ employees have no interest in what is happening to homeowners.

“That’s something else that’s not their problem. I don’t know how you can motivate employees to take care of this,” he said.