"No 2 Housing Crime"

Thursday, November 29, 2012

OCCUPIERS ESCALATE DIRECT ACTIONS FOR L.A. FAMILIES FACING FORECLOSURE BY FORECLOSURE KING DEUTSCHE BANK
German bank’s refusal to help East L.A. family brings participation by the Occupy Movement to bring attention to bank's foreclosure practices affecting tens of thousands of families in the U.S.A.

November 29, 2012

Los Angeles - After residing in East L.A. for 15 years, the Lucero family faces eviction by LA County Sheriffs following a questionable foreclosure by Deutsche Bank. The Luceros made payments towards a loan modification on time, but Deutsche Bank refuses to honor it and help the family stay in their home. Homeowner Margarita Lucero explains, “I just want to keep my home and I want the bank to accept the payment plan they promised me. I want to keep my family together.”

The Lucero family came to Occupy Fights Foreclosures, a homeowners advocacy group fighting foreclosures, asking for assistance in what she describe as "wrongful foreclosure and eviction". OFF and activists from Occupy LA and Occupy Whittier took action and mobilized to protect the family by occupying the Lucero residence.

"We contacted top Deutsche Bank executives in New York to try to get help but thus far they have been unwilling to help, they claim that they are only the trustees," says Carlos Marroquin. Deutsche Bank didn’t just act as a trustee that — coincidentally, it seems — they are actively involved in pushing the foreclosure process, court proceedings, auctions, sales and trading properties. "Deutsche Bank has referred us to their servicer Carrington Mortgage and refuses to take responsibility for the eviction." The German bank is responsible for tens of thousands of foreclosures and evictions here in the United States and has repeatedly broken U.S. foreclosures laws by short-cutting the process, forging documents, and ignoring U.S. judges' orders. Since Occupy has begun defending the Lucero home more victimized homeowners have come forward seeking help from what they are calling "wrongful foreclosure by Deutsche Bank." The German bank is berated on the internet as “America’s Foreclosure King.”

According to real estate expert Steve Dilbert, “some 85 to 90 percent of all outstanding mortgages in the USA are ultimately controlled by four banks, either as trustees or owners of a trust company. Deutsche Bank is one of the four.” Criticized publicly for his company’s role in the foreclosures, former Deutsche-Bank CEO Josef Ackermann responded: “It’s painful to look at these houses.”

Deutsche Bank as Trustees also played a central role in the profitable boom in high-risk mortgages that were marketed predatorily to people. The Countrywide Financial Corporation, which approved risky mortgages for $97.2 billion from 2005 to 2007, was the biggest provider of these mortgages in the United States. According to the study by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, Deutsche Bank was one of Countrywide’s biggest financiers.

The German bank is currently facing several lawsuits by the U.S. Government and the City of Los Angeles for their participation in fraud and blight conditions in Los Angeles. They are now under fire from Occupy Los Angeles. Occupy is committed to standing with Deutsche Bank's victims and all homeowners fighting foreclosure fraud.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Foreclosure Crisis Hitting Older Americans Hard

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- More than 1.5 million older Americans already have lost their homes, with millions more at risk as the national housing crisis takes its toll on those who are among the worst positioned to weather the storm, a new AARP report says. Older African Americans and Hispanics are the hardest hit.

"The Great Recession has been brutal for many older Americans," said Debra Whitman, AARP's policy chief. "This shows that home ownership doesn't guarantee financial security later in life."
Even working two jobs hasn't been enough to allow Jewel Lewis-Hall, 57, to make her monthly mortgage payments on time. Her husband has made little money since being laid off from his job at a farmers' market, and Lewis-Hall said her salary as a school cook falls short of what she needs to make the payments on her home in Washington.

Lewis-Hall and her husband have been making their payments late for about a year, but panic didn't set in until recently, when the word "foreclosure" showed up in a letter from the bank.

"You're used to living a certain way, but one thing leads to another," Lewis-Hall said. "It's not like I have a new car or anything. I'm driving one from 1991."

According to AARP:

* About 600,000 Americans who are 50 or older are in foreclosure.
* About 625,000 in the same age group are at least three months behind on their mortgages.
* About 3.5 million -- 16 percent of older homeowners -- are underwater, meaning the home value has gone down and homeowners now owe more than their homes are worth.

AARP said that over the past five years, the proportion of loans held by older Americans that are seriously delinquent jumped more than 450 percent.

Homeowners who are younger than 50 have a lower rate of serious delinquency than their older counterparts, and the rate is increasing at a faster pace for older Americans than for younger ones, according to AARP's analysis of more than 17 million mortgages.

Americans who are 50 or older are hard-pressed to recover from the collapse of the housing market that started in 2006 and was compounded by the recession that started in 2007. Eight in 10 of them own homes, but many live on fixed incomes, have little savings or already have burned through much of their retirement savings. They also have fewer working years left to build back what they may have lost.

Also, those who are forced to re-enter the workforce often find they can't command the same salary that they did in the past.

Older minorities are facing foreclosure rates that are almost double those faced by white borrowers of the same age, mirroring a nationwide trend seen in other age groups as well. Among older African Americans, 3.5 percent were in foreclosure at the end of 2011, and the rate was 3.9 percent for Hispanics. Just 1.9 percent of white homeowners were in foreclosure.

The issue has become so dire in U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings' Maryland district that he has assigned one of his 20 staffers to work fulltime to help struggling homeowners, and his office holds regular foreclosure prevention workshops. He said the federal government can do its part by promoting principal reduction and loan modification programs.

"These are people who in many instances have never missed a payment in 20 years," Cummings, a Democrat, said in an interview. "You see grown men crying because of the potential loss of a home."

Among older homeowners, those who are 75 or older are in the worst shape when it comes to foreclosures, the report showed. In 2007, one out of every 300 homeowners 75 or older was in foreclosure. Five years later, about one in 30 face that same fate.

Many of those oldest homeowners may have lost income they were counting on, such as the retirement benefits of a deceased spouse. In the meantime, their mortgage payments have stayed the same. The situation is likely to get worse before it gets better, AARP officials predicted, because of a housing market that is recovering at a snail's pace. "This crisis is far from over," Whitman said. "We need to think about more creative solutions now that we have this data."