Public discussion of foreclosure is usually confined to government and banks, experts and government, etc. That won’t work because it leaves out the power of the people. The mortgage wreck is a systematic fraud against homeowners by the banks.

Esmay Parchment bought her home in Irvington in 2004. At the time sales and turnover were everything in the housing market. Price fixing by the banks was universal. Speculators flipped houses every day to rake off profits from zooming prices. Huge closing fees were to be had by realtors.

Parchment’s realtor prevented her from looking at the basement of the home she bought, which had problems. The city inspector’s report made no mention of major defects of the roof. Her attorney alerted her to none of these dangers.

Then the mortgage market began its collapse, and the economy went into crisis. Nonetheless Ms. Parchment paid her mortgage every month plus an extra $1000 for early principal reduction.

In 2009 she applied for a mortgage modification. The servicer took her package of documents and did nothing, only to ask months later that she re-apply. The runaround happened repeatedly. Millions of homeowners have had the same experience with the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP). It was a scam to allow banks to string homeowners along so that millions of foreclosure filings would not hit the courts all at once.

In 2012 Parchment had serious health issues. Appealing to the mortgage servicer for help, she was told, “The bank is in business to make money.” A little later she was told she would receive no modification. Currently her house is valued at half what she paid for it, but she holds 60% of equity against the price she paid. If there were any such thing as justice she would gain full ownership plus a 20% rebate of current value, based on the fraudulent original pricing.

Earlier this year she began to attend meetings of the Coalition to Save Our Homes. “Then I realized I was not the only one,” she said to a storm of applause.

Linda E. Fisher of Seton Hall Law School had earlier told the assembly of the “mind-boggling level of fraud” by mortgage bubble lenders. They made loans they knew borrowers could never repay. Brokers falsified mortgage applications; falsified documents were submitted in closings: mortgage security trustees cannot verify that they own mortgage notes. Court rulings favorable to homeowners have shown fraud.

Mortgage securities investigator Laura Walsh went even further. She charged that trustees never verified that mortgages allegedly belonging to securities issues were actually held by them. She charged that many mortgage based securities contain no mortgages at all. Many are held by retirement funds. Retirees might think there is $100 million in a mortgage fund for their pensions but there is nothing there. “We want people to be held accountable,” she said, calling for enforcement of securities laws.

Homeowner Michael Spruill said mortgage bust terminology deals with water – banks get bailouts, mortgages are under water. “They sucked money out of our community and poured it back on us,” he said. “If nothing is done they will continue sucking that money out of us. The same people are investing in prisons while schools are being closed. They don’t want to educate us. If you are educated you understand the government has responsibility – deregulation allowed it all to happen.”

Irvington Township Councilman David Lyons replied, “When a banker, a respected member of the community, tells you that you can afford a home you believe him. But he’s no more than a thug. If a thug on the street took your money he’d be in jail.”

Cynthia Johnson talked of a high note of homeowner resistance last year when many individuals joined and picketed at her mother’s house in Orange on the day she was scheduled for eviction, forcing a postponement. After that, ongoing people’s struggle forced giant JP Morgan Chase to admit it had no financial interest in the house. Johnson said her mother had been subjected to so much stress she still won’t leave home for fear she will not be able to get in when she returns. Speaking of local officials, she said “Leaders should step up and be leaders. If they empty out the cities nothing will be left.”

The Irvington Municipal Council had passed a resolution the day before that included a list of action items to address the mortgage crisis, appended below. The resolution was read aloud at the end of the assembly, in an inspiring atmosphere of people’s unity.

The meeting was sponsored and organized by a range of grassroots people’s organizations including the Coalition to Save Our Homes, NJ Communities United, the Irvington Branch of the NAACP and the People’s Organization for Progress.

Big financial corporations are the dominant institutions of United States society. Government and regulators are controlled by them. Their unquenchable thirst for profits is swallowing the means to meet every human need. But they have a weakness: a great many people hate them. The hearing showed that when people come together in a united effort to oppose them the struggle can indeed surge upward. What happened in Irvington can happen in virtually any community in the United States.

The action items of the municipal resolution are as follows:

• There must be federal and state criminal investigations of lender wrongdoing in the housing bubble. • County prosecutors must investigate wrongful lender claims of foreclosure standing for possible criminal violations. • There must be comprehensive and uncompensated write-downs of overvalued mortgage bubble principles to reflect the true market values of homes. • Eminent domain must be used as a tool for mortgage principal reduction. • Bring mass pressure for an Essex County moratorium on foreclosure evictions until mortgage principals are reduced to true market value. • The County needs to put procedures in place to determine whether or not plaintiffs hold a valid interest before foreclosures can proceed in court. • The State of New Jersey must make more timely allocation of funds for homeowner assistance. • Enforce Irvington's vacant property ordinance to bring much-needed revenue to local coffers and offset the negative budget impacts of the foreclosure crisis. • Bring a class action suit on behalf of homeowners against the banks. • Congress must speedily approve an appointee to head the FHFA, which holds Fannie Mae in receivership, who will proceed to write mortgage principals down according to Pres. Obama’s directive.

#IrvingtonNJ #HousingStruggles #mortgageCrisis #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes #HomeForeclosures

All roads lead to Wall Street. Both predatory lending and closings of public schools are due to Wall Street’s plunder of every human need in order to seize money for its profits.

Both predatory lending and school closings are particularly aimed at communities of people of color. Essex County, New Jersey, in which the cities of Newark and Irvington are located, has the highest foreclosure rate of any county in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut region. Irvington and Newark are among the hardest hit in Essex. Both have high concentrations of Black and Latino people. Also, more than 20 Newark schools have been closed in the last three years. All but one are in areas that serve African American neighborhoods.

Also, combined struggles on more than one front strengthen every area of the people’s struggle for economic justice. The battles for a real national health care system for all, a good quality public school education for all, full employment in good-paying jobs, and others, are closely linked.

For several years there has been a huge uproar in Newark against school closings. Thousands have turned out at public meetings to oppose the actions of the dictatorial Trenton-imposed administration.

Annette Alston of the Newark Teachers’ Association said students find themselves suddenly forced to attend charter schools far from where they live. There is a new teachers’ evaluation rubric that is either not understood by administrators or abused by them. Teachers are forced out of their jobs and careers for no good reason. A recent study found charter schools in Newark outperform public schools. However, the study did not take into account that charter schools select students from households with high parental involvement; they expel others they do not want, and so forth. It is only being done to save money on public schools. Years ago women were attacked for being witches, she said. Now teachers, who are mostly women, are being attacked. It also appears that a large proportion of affected teachers are black.

Kathleen Witcher of the Irvington NAACP, and a retired educator, gave an evaluation of charter schools based on her family’s experience. Her children went through Newark public schools and went to colleges like Stanford, Rutgers, and USC; one has a PhD. She has grandnieces in charter schools. Her monitoring turned up things she called horrendous. Students are not taught mathematics from axioms but from ditto sheets – just plug in the numbers and keep going. A grandniece won a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school but couldn’t write essays because they had not been taught in charter school. Meanwhile the state of New Jersey is being allowed to shortchange public schools.

Sharon Smith of Parents Unified for Local School Education (PULSE) quoted Dr. Martin Luther King who spoke of people who sleep through a revolution. She said we are in a revolution now and must find new responses. Public schools are destroyed by the lack of resources while charter schools get all the latest equipment, for instance. On Jan. 9, people from 18 cities concerned with a “new mode of education that is destroying our children” went to Washington to meet with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

There is no sustainable, positive change coming from charter schools. It all stems from Wall Street demands for profits. The group filed a Title 6 complaint (civil rights violation) against school closings. The group won a federally-supported grass roots tour of affected school districts and a federal hearing on school closings. Also, six schools in Newark named for closing remain open.

Still there is no new investment in affected school districts, with wholesale firing of teachers. Potentially 185,000 students are in danger of having their schools closed. PULSE is planning a “Journey for Justice” to keep schools open.

The evening was a definite step toward building a broad front of unity in the people's struggle for economic justice. The linkage of issues went a long way toward showing the problem is capitalism itself.

#IrvingtonNJ #PoorPeoplesMovements #WallStreet #EducationRights #Capitalism #PublicSchools #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes #HomeForeclosures

• People who have already lost their homes would supposedly be compensated $3.75 billion. It might sound like a lot but it is peanuts. If the banks really had to pay up for predatory lending, about $1 trillion in homeowner compensation would be a good start.

• In return for this puny cost-of-doing-business expense, the government will end efforts to hold lenders responsible for paperwork abuses like improper accounting of payments and excessive fees.

• The money would go to reduce payments for people who could then stay in their homes. That is, banks will reduce a few mortgages and avoid foreclosure losses. It is a write-off of money the banks would lose anyway. This way the banks get to keep something. The ‘settlement’ is only the latest bank bailout in disguise.

• The ‘settlement’ will end a review of 4 million mortgages ordered in 2011 by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the Treasury Department. The banks paid the expenses of the review, which meant they could do things their own way. Now the review is ending because the banks say it is too expensive.

The lesson, as so many times before, is that distressed homeowners must join together to find their own solutions. They must end their personal isolation. The Coalition to Save Our Homes, the People’s Organization for Progress, and many other community and labor organizations have worked with distressed homeowners. We have marched and protested at bank locations, exposing the real culprits in the mortgage bubble. We demand a hearing for homeowners by the New Jersey Attorney General. We demand a federal criminal investigation of Wall Street's wrongdoing in the mortgage bubble.

Last year many people banded together and stopped a foreclosure eviction in Orange of Susie Johnson, forcing mighty JP Morgan Chase to admit it held no financial interest in her home. We recently brought a strong turnout to a New Jersey Appeals Court hearing of a case that highlights everything that is wrong with the judicial process in foreclosure.

United struggle is the right path for distressed homeowners to follow, not dependence on treacherous government programs. The power of the people is not just a fine-sounding ideal. It is a real force in the world, the only one the vast majority of the people can depend on.

#NewarkNJ #WallStreet #HousingStruggles #bankBailout #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes #HomeForeclosures

Trenton, NJ, – The people’s struggle against foreclosures took a new turn before the New Jersey Court of Appeals here, Dec. 19.

Foreclosure today is capitalism in chaos, a capitalism of swindling even on its own terms. New problems require new tactics of struggle.

In early December, Attorney Adam Deutsch was invited to speak to the Coalition to Save Our Homes, a group in Essex County that organizes homeowners to take the initiative in the struggle against predatory lending. He suggested that one thing people can do is turn out and pack the courtroom when important foreclosure defense motions are presented.

He later mentioned a case in progress that shows the marks of chaos. The bank, HSBC, had never met the requirements of law to prove it held a financial interest in the mortgage. In the foreclosure trial the judge pointed out to the HSBC attorney that the mortgage note, the crucial point of the bank’s financial interest in the property, had not been submitted to the court. The attorney replied that no defense was being made.

No one would argue that, if someone walked into a store when no one was there, they could lawfully clean out the till and walk off with the money. The judge should have stopped right there and not allowed HSBC to continue until it proved it had a claim on the house. Instead HSBC was allowed to proceed. This defect and others in HSBC’s case were not removed in the foreclosure hearing when final judgment (i.e., order of foreclosure) was granted against the homeowner.

A big problem for the defense appeal is that the homeowner did not come to court to defend before judgment of foreclosure was issued. The defense therefore had to deal with procedural issues of delays in filing, as well as seizure of property by a bank with no proven financial interest in it. The defense also says lower court decisions were made in error and should be reversed.

These issues figure in millions of predatory lending cases. Courts far too often exhibit a double standard. Homeowners are excused for nothing and banks for anything.

The difference in the Dec. 19 hearing was that homeowners, activists, and organized labor representatives showed up in court. A case that ordinarily would have been heard before an empty courtroom was heard before a body of citizens with their own sense of justice. The discomfort of the bank’s attorney was obvious. He began in a mumbling tone of voice and an attendee called out, “We can’t hear you.” Ordinarily that is a big no-no in court but the only result was that the attorney spoke up. He distanced himself from the issue of ownership of the mortgage note. The court asked if the bank had submitted properly certified proof of ownership – the defense contends it had not – and the response was a stammered, “I guess so.”

Decisions are not delivered at appeals court hearings. The judges take the case under advisement and issue their decision later.

However the decision turns out, the day showed the way forward. The people’s forces felt a sense of unity and empowerment. We can fight the banks, we can fight foreclosure. We don’t have to settle for making the best of a bad situation. We can attack the bad situation itself. If there is no justice in the halls of justice we will bring our own standard of justice. We will depend on ourselves to build a broader, stronger, more united movement for people’s economic justice, and we will succeed.

#TrentonNJ #HousingStruggles #crisisOfCapitalism #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes #HomeForeclosures #AttorneyAdamDeutsch

“POP demands that criminal investigations of bank misconduct in the mortgage bubble be undertaken and federal and state levels. The first priority must be to find out what happened to the supposedly ‘missing’ mortgage notes. The investigations must also look into the actions of the banks in the overpricing of homes, selling them for much more than they were worth. Finding of both civil and criminal wrongdoing must be prosecuted.”

POP and C2SOH scheduled a Nov. 1 protest rally in Trenton, the New Jersey state capital, to demand an investigation. Other demands are that Governor Chris Christie release $300 million in federal funds for distressed homeowners that has been held up, and that mortgage principals be reduced to reflect the true market value of overpriced homes.

“Every government program to supposedly help distressed homeowners has turned out to be a bank bailout in disguise,” said a spokesperson for the campaign. The Home Affordable Mortgage Program as a case in point. Millions of homeowners have been strung along for months by banks, having to file extensive applications time after time only to be denied and then saddled with charges and fines by the banks for the delay!

Bank criminality in abusive loans that were designed to fail and the Three-card Monte games they played with mortgage notes were criminal violations. There has not been a single criminal prosecution for any of it.

POP and C2SOH are reaching out to other organizations and people in a petition addressed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Already it has met with an eager response. Work is under way for a coordinated effort. Everyone wants this to happen.

#NewarkNJ #HousingStruggles #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #AttorneyGeneralEricHolder #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes #HomeForeclosures

Newark, NJ – A protest against predatory lending took place here, Sept. 15, at the Broad Street branch of Wells Fargo Bank. It was the joint effort of the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) and the Coalition to Save Our Homes (C2SOH).

Demands included immediate mortgage reduction, an end to foreclosure by banks that do not own the mortgage, and a five-year moratorium on foreclosures. The overall demand was to end Wall Street’s lawless reign of financial terror and make banks obey the law.

Many speakers, including distressed homeowners, took turns on the bullhorn to denounce predatory lending. The Newark area is hard hit by the depression. There are many issues. Foreclosure and homelessness are epidemic. Community violence claims lives every few days. The public schools are being closed and privatized in the areas where black people live. Mayor Cory Booker, a ‘rising star’ of the Democratic Party, is trying to sell off and privatize the city water system against intense community resistance.

Many protesters spoke on the bullhorn. Housing is a human right! There should be no poverty at all in the United States. Everyone should have a nice place to live. No one should ever have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. The problem is that capital’s need for profit eats up every human need.The government must take action against predatory lenders.

Protesters mingled with passersby throughout the event. A couple of people took POP and C2SOH literature and passed it out. Several distressed homeowners were given self-help information and were told about C2SOH. People raised their hands in solidarity. It became clear that everybody hates Wall Street, homeowner or not.

A key demand that was voiced at the protest is that special prosecutors be appointed at federal and state levels to investigate civil and criminal wrongdoing by financial corporations. There has been vast financial misconduct, much of it criminal, as well as predatory lending. The economy is in depression. Financial chaos is everywhere. Yet no one has been investigated, no one has been prosecuted and no one has gone to jail for all the harm that has been done. Regulators do nothing, Congress does nothing.

It is time to appoint special prosecutors to get the job done. It is important to clear up what happened to those millions of ‘missing’ mortgage promissory notes. We do not believe the usual excuses about ‘slicing and dicing’ in financial trading. The banks are hiding something. Let prosecutors investigate and find out. Let the chips fall where they may. As protesters chanted, the banks are “Not too big to fail, not too big to jail.”

#NewarkNJ #WallStreet #HousingStruggles #PeoplesOrganizationForProgress #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes #HomeForeclosures

Orange, NJ – Over 30 people turned out, March 30, to protest the scheduled eviction of Susie Johnson, 77, from the home in which she has lived for 30 years. Their strong stand drew media coverage to the case. The eviction was not carried out today because the protest exposed injustice. A postponement until May 15 is in effect.

The protest was called by the Coalition to Save Our Homes.

The postponement is a people’s victory, but the struggle continues. The banks and the courts think they can ignore the rights of an elderly low-income African-American woman.

Mrs. Johnson is represented by her daughter, Cynthia Johnson. Foreclosure was filed by Wells Fargo but the documents carry the names of several banks. JP Morgan Chase also wants an account number on the case. At this point it is not even clear what bank the Johnson family must deal with. The banks must be forced to clean their act up.

The case has a long, messy history of abuses but the people’s forces don’t need a lot of details to act. We know banks have abused tens of millions of borrowers and gotten bailed out for trillions of dollars when their crazy, crooked schemes failed. We know it doesn’t matter what the banks do, prosecutors will look the other way. We have had it. This is a question of human rights. Our line is, “Don’t evict grandma, don’t evict Susie Johnson,” and that’s it.

The explosion in foreclosure cases started seven years ago but at no official level has anything effective been done for victims. The latest “settlement” with state Attorneys General and five big banks is typical. The banks are trying to buy immunity from prosecution for their violations in exchange for expenses they would bear anyway being counted as a “settlement.”

It’s like they’re looking for a way to pay ten bucks to avoid a business loss of twelve bucks. It’s not justice. It’s a fake. It’s official collusion. The people are the losers. We won’t stand for it.

There are millions of Susie Johnsons who have had their human and economic rights violated by fraud and crimes by the banks. Her case shows the only way to get economic justice, or any other kind of justice for the 99%, is through the power of the people.

People showed up at the March 30 protest for many reasons and from many organizations. There were victims of predatory lending who see the injustice to themselves in terms of a broad social issue. Women’s equality, human and civil rights organizations, organized labor, the Occupy movement, veteran activists and those newly come to struggle – all were represented.

Lawrence Hamm of the People’s Organization for Progress called for a moratorium by the sheriff’s office on foreclosure evictions, as in Cook County, Illinois. He blamed the foreclosure epidemic exclusively on the banks and their predatory lending practices. Maretta Short of NOW-NJ told about the devastating impact on low-income women and children of trillions of dollars in human services budget cuts. Another person said college students now bear over a trillion dollars of educational debt. A student told of facing 179 months of payments for her education.

Harry Perryman from nearby Irvington told how Irvington General Hospital was closed a few years ago. Now there is a plan to build a medical waste disposal plant there. “They close our hospital but give us the trash,” he said. There is strong community opposition to the proposed plant.

Another speaker pointed out that all of these abuses stem from the same cause. Investment capital in the United States amounts to many, many trillions of dollars. There is so much capital that its ravenous appetite for profit swallows up the money for every human need.

When the deputies from the sheriff’s office appeared they did not insist on proceeding with the eviction. Instead they called their supervisor for instructions. He came and asked Cynthia Johnson procedural questions about the courts. The outcome was the postponement of any action until May 15.

The protesters cheered at the victory. Even the deputies seemed relieved. A Legal Services attorney who came to the protest agreed to help organize Susie Johnson’s case and assist with her defense. In the past she has not been able to afford to hire an attorney.

The day showed the power of the people is a real force, not just a nice slogan. We must remain vigilant. There is no justice without people’s struggle.

#OrangeNJ #PoorPeoplesMovements #Foreclosures #HousingStruggles #AfricanLiberation #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes #JPMorganChase

Irvington, NJ – In spite of a winter storm, the Coalition to Save Our Homes marched and rallied here, Oct. 29, against home foreclosures. The group maintains the wave of foreclosures is due to overpricing of the home market by mortgage lenders. They want mortgage principals reduced to amounts that homeowners can pay.

“The citizens didn’t cause the foreclosure crisis, the banks did,” said Sharon Hands of the People’s Organization for Progress. “Greed and corruption did it. People living in their homes didn’t say, ‘Oh, I want to live in a box’ or ‘I want to be homeless.’” She said that the Irvington administration should do more to keep residents in their homes. Members of the Newark Teachers’ Association and Residents for a Better Community of Irvington also participated.

The Coalition is gathering signatures on a petition to New Jersey Attorney General Paula Dow demanding that she take action against lenders for overpricing the market. They want the penalty to be reduction of principal to a true market value.

Irvington police escorted the marchers through heavy snow and traffic on Clinton Avenue. The group also chanted demands for better health care and jobs for all. In spite of difficult driving conditions drivers waved and honked their horns to show approval.

Kathleen Witcher of the Irvington NAACP spoke at a closing rally. She cited big increases in property taxes as an additional burden on homeowners and said action must be taken to keep Irvington from turning into a ghost town. The event ended with the call on the banks to “give the money back” that they had overpriced.

#IrvingtonNJ #Foreclosures #HousingStruggles #CoalitionToSaveOurHomes