This week, we look at an interesting proposal to help victims of the foreclosure crisis. H.R. 1548, the Right to Rent Act sponsored by Congressman Raul Grijalva essentially gives homeowners facing foreclosure the opportunity to continue living in their home as a renter. The idea behind this being that companies would want to avoid becoming landlords, and would thus work harder with homeowners to find a reasonable agreement.
Tag: Foreclosure
Apr 04 2011
Need a Reason for “We Are One” today-60min’s Report
AFL-CIO blog site about rallies-link in graphic
If you thought you didn’t have a reason to participate in the April 4th “We Are One” {face book page link} rallies around the country this report will certainly plant that needed seed as they continue trying to destroy what America once was building successfully, through it’s workers!
6omin. 3 April 2011, if you missed this it’s a must watch and or read!
Oct 14 2010
Foreclosure Robo-Signers Play Dress Up To Fool You
(I know this, because Tyler knows this)
NEW YORK (AP) — In an effort to rush through thousands of home foreclosures since 2007, financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in “foreclosure expert” jobs with no formal training, a Florida lawyer says.
In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn’t define the word “affidavit.” Others didn’t know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers’ accusations about document fraud.
Oh, it gets better, and you’ll get angrier…..
Oct 05 2010
Grayson Untangles the Web of Fraud in the ‘Foreclosure Mills’
Citigroup, Ally Sued for Racketeering Over Database
Bloomberg
By Margaret Cronin Fisk and Thom Weidlich – Oct 4, 2010
Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. units were sued by homeowners in Kentucky for allegedly conspiring with Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. to falsely foreclose on loans.
The lawsuit, filed as a civil-racketeering class action on behalf of all Kentucky homeowners facing foreclosure, also names as a defendant Reston, Virginia-based MERS, the company that handles mortgage transfers among member banks. The suit claims that through MERS the banks are foreclosing on homes even when they don’t hold titles to the properties.
[…]
The homeowners claim the defendants filed or caused to be filed mortgages with forged signatures, filed foreclosure actions months before they acquired any legal interest in the properties and falsely claimed to own notes executed with mortgages.
Forgery is No Joke.
Neither is being evicted, by Banks who ‘really don’t own’ your Home.
Oct 02 2010
Citibank fails to prove Mortgage Ownership, in Foreclosure Suit
Thank goodness. It couldn’t have happen a day too soon.
NBC Nightly News (03-09-09) Tent Cities of Homeless Springing Up In Bad Times
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F94f_Ycsjs
Tent City, USA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
Sep 02 2010
Why is it “Deficits don’t matter” — whenever THEY are in Charge?
Let me jog your memory, about one of the more memorable things the Former VP said to a ‘fiscally responsible’ Treasury Secretary — right before he fired him …
OnTheIssues.org
[…]
O’Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone — posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: “We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due.” A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.
Source: Adam Entous, Reuters, on AOL News Jan 11, 2004
Maybe “deficits don’t really matter” — whenever the Gophers have the National “Credit Card” in THEIR Pockets — Then it’s Party time, for their friends and buddies in the corporate boardrooms?
Otherwise — it’s “evict the lazy bastards”.
Cut the Funds for something — NOW!
May 02 2010
May One – Rerun/Recycled/New President/FooledAgain
A reminder that May 1 is the International Worker’s Day and early American labor rights protesters initiated it. It’s an American tradition – not a Communist tradition. And it’s a pagan tradition from the dawn of time.
I hope you all had a great May Day. As I post this it’s still May 1 from the CDT zone westward. For those who saw the original post, you can just skip it or get refreshed. For those who haven’t seen it, it has some interesting background on the history of the day.
Herewith, a recycled essay:
May 1.
A lot of Americans have apparently been brainwashed during their formative years. Especially the crowd over at the site that shall not be named. The vast majority associate the first day of the month of May as a Soviet Communist celebration day. Then again a sizable number of Uhmericans think Saddam Hussein was complicit in the 9/11 atrocities. Oh, and the wiretapping started after 9/11 and not like late February or early March of 2001.
May first was a holiday before there was a May. It’s a cross-quarter day. That means it falls about halfway between a solstice and an equinox. Back before keyboards, laser mice and high-speed internet connections people used to notice these things. The only thing that emitted light, besides fire, was in the sky. You can check out the sky anytime. Just click here. Cool, huh? And you didn’t have to let go of your mouse to do it.
So back in the days of stone knives and bearskins, and I’m not talking about the Star Trek episode where Spock and McCoy have to build a time-machine thingie with 1930s tech, or even the dark ages of eight bit processors, RAM limits of 65536 bytes and machine code, I’m talking real stone and real bear. Hell, sabre-tooth tiger and wooly mammoth times. Back when chipped flint was high-tech. In the time of neo-pagans (not to be confused with the neopaganists of today).
Together with the solstices and equinoxes (Yule, Ostara, Midsummer, and Mabon), these form the eight solar holidays in the neopagan wheel of the year. They are often celebrated on the evening before the listed date, since traditionally the new day was considered to begin at sunset rather than at midnight.
Festival name Date Sun’s Position
Samhain 1 Nov (alt. 5-10 Nov)
Imbolc 2 Feb (alt. 2-7 Feb)
Beltane 1 May (alt. 4-10 May)
Lughnasadh 1 Aug (alt. 3-10 Aug)There are Christian and secular holidays that correspond roughly with each of these four, and some argue that historically they originated as adaptations of the pagan holidays, although the matter is not agreed upon. The corresponding holidays are:
* St.Brigids Day (1 Feb), Groundhog Day (2 Feb), and Candlemas (2 or 15 Feb)
* Walpurgis Night (30 Apr) and May Day (1 May)
* Lammas (1 Aug)
* Halloween (31 Oct), All Saints (1 Nov), and All Souls’ Day (2 Nov)Groundhog Day is celebrated in North America. It is said that if a groundhog comes out of his hole on 2 February and sees his shadow (that is, if the weather is good), there will be six more weeks of winter. February 2nd marks the end of the short days of winter. Because average temperatures lag behind day length by several weeks, it is (hopefully) the beginning of the end of winter cold.
It’s been Groundhog Day in Iraq for five seven years now. But who’s counting?
UPDATE: we’ve been lobbing explosives into Afghanistan since Clinton’s time. The definition of insanity is repeating the same act and expecting a different result. Our MIC PWOT is insane – but it keeps their funding flowing while we lose our jobs and homes.
It’s 2010 now and nothing has really changed that much, has it? I hope you enjoyed this May Day. It’s a day for Working Class Heroes.
There’s more:
Dec 22 2009
Who is HAMP Helping?
h/t to Huffington Post
This will be relatively short as my outrage meter seems to be peaking again.
As the next wave of defaults is churning its way through the prime mortgage market our saviors in Washington have come up with a new way to scam the general populace. Its called bailing out the banks, part II.
Dec 13 2009
The Economic Bill of Rights — and the long March of History
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “The Economic Bill of Rights”
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all-regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
Dec 08 2009
Homeowners getting hit a second time
You’re in debt up to your eyeballs. You can’t keep up with the mortgage and you are going to lose your home. It doesn’t get any worse than that, right? Wrong.
Lawyers for troubled Staten Island homeowners say they are beginning to see examples of clients who go to the bank to take out money and find that their accounts have been frozen or wiped out by other banks or debt collectors — the entities holding second mortgages on houses already in default on the first and primary mortgage. Some are learning the lender or debt collector has already gone to court and secured a judgment to garnish paychecks.
It’s a move more in line with the traditional debt collection industry, which typically targets credit card debt, and it’s dragging the house and what little cash reserves people often have into the foreclosure battleground. Experts say it’s an end-run by second lien holders around the traditional foreclosure process, which involves only the first mortgage holder and provides important legal protections for the homeowner.
Nov 30 2009
No HOPE for HAMP
The Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program has been touted as a savor of distressed homeowners across America. The problem is that the numbers show an entirely different story.
More than 650,994 loan revisions had been started through the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program as of last month, from about 487,081 as of September, according to the Treasury. None of the trial modifications through October had been converted to permanent repayment plans, the Treasury data showed.
None? NONE! Not a single one! WTF!
Five months and 651,000 trial modifications and not one single borrower can get a permanent break? We throw hundreds of billions of dollars at these TARP banks and they can’t cut a single distressed homeowner some slack?
These “trial” modifications only last 90 days, so its not like there hasn’t been thousands of mortgage holders who have tried to turn it around, and the banks then rejected.
Nov 20 2009
Law of Unintended Consequences
There are those that would like you to believe that the worst for housing has passed. Stories about depleted inventory, or multi-year lows.
Government programs, first-time home buyer tax credits and gifts to the builders…. heck even our propaganda machine is pushing the idea of getting people to buy a home.
(CBS) Real estate experts in many parts of the country are saying now’s the time to buy.
[..]
Early Show money maven Ray Martin weighed in on the Saturday Edition about whether buying is indeed the way go to now,
IS THIS A GOOD TIME TO INVEST IN REAL ESTATE?Yes, it is, and for a number of reasons. For one thing, housing prices are declining just about nationwide. Plus, mortgage rates are at a serious low. Rates on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage are at a level we won’t see again in our lifetime. Finally, if you buy before December 1, you’ll get an $8,000 tax credit if you’re a first-time buyer. For all those reasons, there’s really never been a better time to go shopping for real estate.