There is much more ahead in the current mortgage foreclosure crisis. Temporary assistance programs designed to benefit those in desperate need have seen record numbers of applicants. Our scheduled foreclosure sales and related foreclosure court parts have rapidly expanded to meet the growing demands of our nation’s largest lenders. Loan modification companies have been branded outlaws. Non-profit housing counseling agencies and local bar associations offer pro bono services to the homeowner in distress and remain hugely under-funded. Welfare, foreclosure, mortgage defaults and economic shockwaves with record job losses are ripping up the very fabric of American dreams and aspirations.
We are a country torn to pieces. And yet we continue to scan for hopes and rays of ways to keep our homes. Even in the first days of this crisis, homeowners sought out methods and created new initialed programs to save our homes and neighborhoods from the permanent scars of a foreclosed home on our block. Have our bankers and financial decision makers designed anything of substance to tilt the balance of delinquencies back to successful modifications?
One might think that the repayment of the TARP loans by the largest lending institutions would give pause to auction sales, and lend a great weight to the recovery, After all, with Detroit now competing successfully against the biggest of the foreign automakers, and Congress’s measures to strengthen and guarantee absolute continuity for our largest banks, the shockwaves felt during the past several years cannot reoccur. The unexpected has been measured and the Treasury Department has seen us through the worst of times. Have we saved ourselves?
Where, however, are the millions and billions of dollars of toxic loans gone? Our houses and bricks are still here. Although we are told that our debt crisis has been solved, who has identified the mass exodus from these mortgage delinquencies? Clearly these complex trails of destruction lead to the thousands of pieces necessary for the picture puzzle solution.
From experience, and first hand participation in the trenches of this foreclosure crisis, the pieces connect when a family reaches out with a call to our law firm looking to keep home their own. Perhaps an email describes a homeowner’s many months of non-payment, followed by years of submitting pay stubs and tax returns, letters of hardship and financial statements, only to result in a notice of sale for a week from Wednesday. The harsh reality of a Marshall entering the front door and demanding that you take your children, parents and loved ones and vacate immediately begins the process of connecting the pieces. On the surface of such a call or an email is fear, but beyond the fear of loss is the unremitting intention to prevent the foreclosure sale and the desire to sustain the home which pushed the homeowner to reach out to our lawyers.
This is not about your lenders controlling the process and the evictions. It is about our clients beginning to read and witness that the litigation path is a roadway of success and solution. One by one, a home is saved. One by one, a family talks about an order to show cause and a motion to vacate a default judgment. One by one, a family discusses the sewer-service method banks use to take away their homes as readily as they would discuss a trip to the supermarket.
In our law firm, we argue for education and to bring about an in-depth analysis of the foreclosure laws which present opportunities to the many who choose to keep their homes. You are a named defendant in a foreclosure summons because you own your home and you can continue to own your home by engaging the pieces and challenging the lending practices of the past to bring about the modern agreements and settlements so often seen in our courts on a daily basis. The pieces are in the box but there are moments and observations which are not mere research ideas. These pieces fit together but require your hand and intention to “keep home your own”.
