$4 billion of the settlement will go to consumer relief, but it's still not clear where that money would go. $3.3 billion was earmarked for foreclosed homeowners as part of the Independent Foreclosure Review Settlement, which resulted in most homeowners, many of whom had lost their homes, receiving checks of $300 to $500.

“The first priority of the settlement should be to keep people in their homes,” said Jaymie Kelly, who has lived in her south Minneapolis home for 30 years and is now facing imminent eviction by JPMorgan Chase and Freddie Mac. “JPMorgan Chase refused to work with me after I fell behind on a predatory loan, even though I had paid for my home five times over. Now they want to evict me from my home of 30 years. I am not interested in a settlement check. I want a negotiation with principal reduction to stay in my home.”

Kelly, who bought her home in 1983 for $74,900, has paid $425,000 for it over the years. When Chase foreclosed on her, they claimed she still owed $255,000. Instead of modifying her loan, they sold her home to Freddie Mac, which is aggressively pushing to evict.

Kelly is fighting an eviction defense campaign with Occupy Homes MN. On Oct. 8, 150 community members blockaded the sheriff's attempt to evict her. JPMorgan Chase and Freddie Mac have filed for another eviction order to remove Kelly from her home, but Kelly is not going anywhere.

“No settlement check could make up for the trauma of being forced out of my home of 30 years,” said Kelly. “If this settlement doesn't keep me in my home, my community will. I am not leaving.”

#MinneapolisMN #HousingStruggles #JPMorganChase #HomeForeclosures #OccupyHomesMN #HouseStruggles #JaymieKelly

Kelly, who has paid the value of her home five times over, was scheduled to be evicted by Freddie Mac and the Hennepin County sheriff's department at 10:30 this morning, on her daughter Sinead's 23rd birthday, but a rapid community response forced the sheriffs' deputies to reschedule.

“The government is shut down, but Freddie Mac evictions are still considered an essential service. But the power of community is too big to fail,” said Kelly. “Today's blocked eviction is the greatest birthday present I could give my daughter. I am not moving, and my neighbors stand with me.”

Freddie Mac, which operates under the federal agency FHFA, is continuing its evictions of Kelly and others in spite of the government shutdown.

“Sheriff Stanek and the big banks don't want to do their dirty work in front of 150 community members,” said Nick Espinosa, an organizer with Occupy Homes MN whose family successfully fought off foreclosure last year. “But we will be ready for them at any hour of the day or night. Jaymie's not going anywhere, and neither are we.”

#MinneapolisMN #HousingStruggles #Evictions #governmentShutdown #HomeForeclosures #OccupyHomesMN #HouseStruggles #JaymieKelly #FreddieMac

Minneapolis, MN – 75 community members turned back 30 sheriffs who were trying to evict people from the Ceballos home, July 24. Two home defenders were arrested in acts of civil disobedience.

Under orders from Sheriff Richard Stanek, deputies kicked in the door without warning at 12:40 p.m. One home defender was cut out of a barrel filled with concrete by deputies wielding a jackhammer and saw.

During the eviction attempt, community members drove sheriffs into the backyard, where they retreated after boarding up the property. The Ceballos' family, friends and neighbors removed the boards and returned into the home.

JPMorgan Chase Bank had told the Ceballos family that they were considering them for a loan modification, but then filed for eviction at the same time. This process is known as dual tracking and is illegal under the national mortgage settlement. On July 22, Chase asked for another loan modification application from the Ceballos family, which they accepted July 23.

“Yesterday we went to Chase because they said they would help us,” said Jonathan Ceballos. “Today the sheriffs show up at our house to evict. The question is, to the sheriffs and to Chase – who are you helping? They want to see another empty house but it's not going to happen, because we the people are here to support one another. We hope Mayor Rybak will not send police to attempt another eviction of my family while we continue to negotiate with the bank. We don't need any more arrests.”

The Ceballos family lives in south Minneapolis' Eviction Free Zone, a community where neighbors have pledged to stand up against unjust evictions.

#MinneapolisMN #HousingStruggles #Evictions #JPMorganChase #HomeForeclosures #RichardStanek

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

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.

#StPaulMN #WellsFargo #HousingStruggles #HomeForeclosures #JessicaEnglish #HomeownerBillOfRights