St. Paul, MN – 40 residents and community supporters from the Foreclosure and Eviction Free Zone marched on Wells Fargo with the boards used to illegally board up an occupied home. The march was part of the Homes for All national day of action, March 13. It was also hours after bank lobbyists killed the Homeowner Bill of Rights at the Minnesota state capitol.

Community supporters marched the boards and 7000 petition signatures on behalf of Jessica English – a homeless single mother who has recently reclaimed an abandoned Wells Fargo home – to demand the bank call off their illegal eviction attempts and negotiate with English. English has come home from work twice over the past two weeks to find that Wells Fargo had boarded up her home while she was gone – which is illegal without a court order under Minnesota law.

Meanwhile, at the capitol, banker-turned-Senator Jim Metzen, D-South Saint Paul, refused to allow the Homeowner Bill of Rights to be heard in the commerce committee because the bank lobbyists had not agreed to it, effectively killing the bill. The commerce committee instead advanced a different foreclosure bill the night of March 13, SF 1276, that would merely codify existing foreclosure laws.

In previous years Metzen worked to kill legislation pushed by the Minnesota Coalition of a People’s Bailout that would have put a moratorium on home foreclosures.

“There is no excuse for refusing to even hear a modest bill that could stop thousands of Minnesota foreclosures just because the banks it seeks to regulate haven’t signed off on it,” said Nick Espinosa, of Occupy Homes.

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