There Goes the Neighborhood
Published February 06, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Wow, I read the news and I just want to weep sometimes. I've been writing about anti-foreclosure efforts here, mostly focusing on helping homeowners keep their homes. These three articles, from Boston (MA) and Boise (ID) detail the nightmare for renters living in foreclosed homes. The first article starts with a picture of man using boiling water and a fan to heat his apartment. The next describes how a woman with a disabled child lost her job due to too much time in court fighting an eviction proceding launched by a bank in Oregon. The woman in Boise, also disabled, is losing her home of 11 years:
"The bank which owns the building has no interest in, and in fact has a policy against assuming any responsibilities of a landlord, and they will fight tooth and nail before having to fix anything or take on those responsibilities."
The bank, Wells Fargo, says it has no summary eviction policy.
And that's sort of it in a nutshell. This economic collapse we're experiencing is just complete chaos. Homes go into foreclosure, banks have an economic interest in selling the property as quickly as possible and don't want to be bothered dealing with tenants. On the other hand, many of these buildings have fallen into disrepair in the period leading up to foreclosure, and are a hard sell to anyone outside of the tenants who would just like to live there, albeit with the required repairs and improvements. But who's going to do those? From Boston:
"These banks are nowhere to be found when there is any kind of problem. They only come around when they want to kick people out," said Dominic Desiaga, a volunteer with the housing activist group City Life and an East Boston resident. "This happens all the time."
GMAC, like other lenders, says it isn't set up to be a landlord, a position forced upon them by the foreclosure crisis. Cases such as Toussaint's, Bruin said, are prompting the company to review its processes to make sure tenants in buildings it owns are "adequately" housed. "This is becoming a bigger issue," she said.
Yeah, no kidding.
Existing tenants could be allies in these situations:
Some say tenants such as Johnson keep foreclosed buildings from deteriorating even more. "He is taking care of everything," said Kerry Spiller, a real estate agent who met Johnson while showing the building to prospective buyers. "Banks just don't care. Once the bank has it, it doesn't matter if the heat is not on and the pipes burst and it wrecks the place."
But the enormous, global, complex, bureaucratic, distant banks we have now are ill-equipped to pursue those partnerships. Everyone in DC is all in a pickle about what to do over the banks' toxic assets attached to the packaging and selling off of these mortgages. No one knows who owns what and what anything is worth.
It'd be nice if we spent as much time and money trying to figure out a comprehensive, replicable solution to protecting homeowners and renters in foreclosed properties. Local governments and activists are pulling their weight; is anyone listening in DC?
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Comments (10)
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Author
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Leigh is a PhD candidate in urban planning at MIT, and a consultant on U.S. Gulf Coast recovery. She sits on the Board of the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation in Boston, and has worked with non-profits, foundations and local governments on policies and programs aimed at reducing urban poverty and inequality.
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Repeal the Hyde Amendment!
88 People
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Repeal the Hyde Amendment!
Are there too many cases like this for the govt. to buy out the mortgages and sell to the tenants with subsidized mortgages?
Posted by Charlie Reed on 02/06/2009 @ 08:49AM PT
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Considering the US Federal Government isn't allowed by the US Costitution to do such a thing, and we have -$10.7 trillion dollars in spending money (not to mention $50-$100 trillion in unfunded social security and medicare liabilities), then the government cannot reasonably spend more than $0 to buy out the mortgages and subsidize them. However the government has been known to act rather unreasonably.
Posted by jbo5112 . on 02/06/2009 @ 12:35PM PT
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AND if you have a REPUBLICAN Senator in Washington and you haven't called and written daily.... well, it you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
MAKE NOISE FOLKS!!!
Posted by Lee Dorsey on 02/06/2009 @ 09:37AM PT
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I am a little unclear how this is a Republican/Democrat issue.
Posted by Charlie Reed on 02/06/2009 @ 11:59AM PT
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It's not a Republican/Democrat issue. It's an issue of what you want the size and scope of the Federal Government to be.
If you want a large government that bails everyone out of their problems and has complete control of the housing market, then you'll be in favor of the government doing everything to fix this.
If you want a limited government that leaves you to make your own housing deals that you deem as good, without interference (other than something like fraud or failure to uphold the contract) and without a mountain of regulations in buying or selling a house, then you'll want to keep the government from overstepping its boundaries.
Posted by jbo5112 . on 02/06/2009 @ 12:30PM PT
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It would be nice if we didn't keep giving money to these banks who are evicting renters who haven't done anything wrong. It would also be nice if my money wasn't being destroyed by massive bailouts, massive spending, and methods of keeping housing prices high, while I'm trying to gather resources to purchase one.
When I got married, housing prices were too high for my income where I wanted to live, so I got an apartment, even though someone would have given me a mortgage I could barely make payments on. Now I'm making more money, and in a better economic situation. It's more than a little unfair to me if someone now takes money from me, money that I've worked really hard for, and uses it to pay for the housing of everyone who bought a house while I moved into an apartment.
Posted by jbo5112 . on 02/06/2009 @ 12:22PM PT
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jbo5112, I am actually a small government libertarian, but I believe this problem is going to require thinking out of the box. What I am proposing (only if the problem is manegeable) is the govt. loaning tenants the money to buy apartment buildings and go COOP. This may also apply to single family homes. The government is already doing this on some scale. I believe this would facilitate ownership society, and the Govt. would be paid back. I would rather see this than money given to ACORN, NEA, or other things seen in the porkulus package.
Posted by Charlie Reed on 02/06/2009 @ 12:41PM PT
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Too many businesses are greedy and corrupt. Who will protect the innocent people who are being harmed by them, if the government doesn't do it?
I understand people wanting to "keep the government out of their lives", but who protects those who do not have wealthy and powerful relatives (or friends) to protect them?
Posted by Jody Mack on 02/06/2009 @ 01:34PM PT
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The whole economic system is a sham, really. Ultimately their values, always prioritise them. The one's at the top are so selfish, to an unbelievable degree. Their desire to dominate, control and conquer are positively sickening. They are never the one's that cop it up, when reality for everyone else gets smashed into pieces. They are always left in one piece, whilst everyone elses life is a mess. Sadly they just don't care, the elite never have, they just laugh at how they think we've all been had. Massive reform globally, hopefully if it's possible for them to bend, would it still benefit them?
Where I live the Public Housing system is not funded, people a struggle to get housing. You either live on the outskirts, in the city and spend a fortune on car repairs, in holeville, or pay sky high rents. The cost of buying a house from the centre to the middle is so steep for the majority of people. A large majority of people can barely afford to buy the basic essentials, let alone anything else.
If it suits them, sadly it's all they will wear, no-matter how much the holes are seen, by anyone with half a brain. Whatever they can milk, they seem to milk the suffering cow to death. The nature of economy, market, greed and all the other tosser crap.
Heat waves lost produce, but they never want to go the extent that is necessary. Unless it's in their best vested interest. And on top of this they fabricate what they can, the fuhrer is in almost all leaders sadly. Maybe this is overly cynical, where is the kindness, in keeping a faltering system.
No-democracy around the world, all there is an incessant torrent of lies and hypocrisy. There are followers rather than being real leaders, they get undermined the one's that stand-up. So-much talk and so-little appropriate action by the one's that hold the power. Never-before have so-few people had the most money, and the gap between them and the poor been so great. The industrial revolution has done some unkind things to everything. It may kill us all, afterall this is not balance. The world was once a place of plenty, now so-much is lost, and still they don't care, they were never willing to share. It was always, me, me, me in their minds, only thing on their minds.
It was doomed for failure, think how they budget, it's not in the public interest it's in theirs. Less reliance on them though, is it possible, I think it is. Boycott their agenda, their ways, but it has to be done on a enormous level. Irresponsibility, aeroplanes shipping everything from miles, it's nuts.
Posted by Andrew Maude on 02/06/2009 @ 01:52PM PT
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The thing that I have never understood, is how can we spend money in large, like the previous Administrations have done to bail-out banks and buy up bad paper with money that we don't have and then let the banks do whatever they want in regards to how they spend the money with zero accountability?
I know for a fact that there are entire families living under bridges (both literally and figuratively) due to lack of employment or housing opportunities and assistance. But instead of setting it up to actually help the people who absolutely need it they give the money to the banks and let them evict people only to sell off the property if they can, they buyer renovating the property and increasing the rents by at least 2x what the property was worth to start with. Now how does this HELP the economy, especially when people are having trouble affording the rents in most U.S. cities in the first place?
Posted by Daniel Brewer on 02/07/2009 @ 09:18PM PT
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