South Side Homeowners and Tenants picket outside the a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage office demanding the company keep foreclosed families in their homes

South Side Homeowners and Tenants picket outside the a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage office demanding the company keep foreclosed families in their homes

Chicago Anti Eviction Campaign Bank Protest Monday April 22nd meet up for Bus Ride at 1401 e 75th street 930 a.m. for more details text 312 287 7228! Warm Weather means more Actions! Get Active join Us and help some homeowners avoid homelessness! Housing is a Human Right! 11 a.m. we will be at Wells Fargo 511 w north ave please spread word and bring a friend or 2

South Side Women's Shelters Face Closure Due to City Fines

ENGLEWOOD — The City of Chicago said Clara Kirk owes $41,969 for fines accumulated on three Englewood properties she owns.

The 72-year-old mother of five and grandmother of seven said if she is forced to pay the fines, she might have to close two shelters she founded 26 years ago in the same neighborhood.

Kirk, a longtime Englewood resident, is founder and executive director of the West Englewood United Organization, which runs Clara’s House, a transitional shelter where women stay up to 120 days, and Clara’s Place, a 13-unit apartment building for long-term occupants.

The widow said she has been running the shelters for women and children without any grants since 2005, but admits doing so has been difficult.

“I do what I can to keep the doors open, but it is a struggle. I would be grateful for any help I could get. This [organization] has been my legacy. God has given me a gift to help people, and that is all that I know how to do,” Kirk said, fighting tears as she described the joy she gets from helping people.

Felicia Bates, 33, said if the shelters close she would have to find another one for her and her two sons, ages 12 and 14.

“I am working on my GED at Kennedy-King College and want to get into public housing. I have been looking for a job, but no one seems to be hiring,” said Bates, who has lived at the shelter since 2007. “Off hand though, I don’t know where I would go. Another shelter I guess because I don’t have any family here. Both of my parents are dead.”

Walk-ins are not accepted for security reasons, Kirk said. Instead, only occupants referred by government agencies or social service organizations are permitted.

Kirk said it takes roughly $275,000 a year to run Clara’s House, which is fully occupied, and $375,000 for Clara’s Place, which has 37 occupants, even though it could accommodate 59 people. Kirk said she does not have enough money to feed 59 people, which is why Clara’s Place it is not full.

In 2001, Kirk planned to open a men’s shelter, and the City of Chicago donated a house for this cause. But the house, at 6430 S. Seeley Ave., needed repairs Kirk said she couldn't afford.

In January 2006, the city took the house back after Kirk failed to make the repairs, said Roderick Drew, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department. The house was sold in August 2006, Drew said.

But between 2005 and 2006, Kirk was cited by the city’s Buildings Department for violations on the house, said Susan Massel, a spokeswoman for the Buildings Department. The citations were for a broken window and not securing the vacant property.

Drew said Kirk's total fines include tickets she received in 2010 and 2012 for the two shelters as well. And she failed to appear at several administrative hearings where the fines possibly could have been reduced, he said.

The tickets for the shelters included broken windows, doors, uncovered electrical outlets, a damaged back porch and a bedbug infestation. Kirk said all those violations had been remedied.

Still, the fines remain, and Kirk said since 2005 she has been unable to afford to pay her staff of 13, who have worked as volunteers as she tries to get back on her feet.

Volunteer and shelter resident Nadine Sanders, 58, is hoping the shelter stays open long enough for her to collect her Social Security.

“I understand she cannot pay us and is doing everything she can to keep the doors open,” said Sanders, who has two daughters, ages 19 and 22. “I used to work part-time for UPS, but I wasn't making enough to pay my rent, so I got evicted and ended up here.”

In a letter dated March 13, 2013, Nick Lucius, an assistant corporation counsel for the city, made Kirk an offer to settle her fines for $20,984, but that offer expired Wednesday. Previously, Kirk said she offered to settle the violations for $1,000, but Drew said that offer was unacceptable.

City officials said they have been more than fair with Kirk.

"In addition to being a substantial discount of the remaining debt, [the] settlement  included waiving all of the fines that occurred at 6430 S. Seeley after January 3, 2006, when a deed was recorded from Ms. Kirk back to the city," Drew said.

Because Kirk owes the city a debt, she said her organization is no longer eligible to receive grants from the city, state, county or federal governments.

Shawn Warner, a legal adviser to Kirk, said the city intercepted a $6,250 grant the organization received from the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority.

The total grant was for $25,000 but was to be paid out in four disbursements, Warner said.

Drew confirmed that the city received $2,568.89 that was intercepted by the state, as allowed by state law, and it was applied to her debt.

Shelter resident Justine Sanders, 41, said she still is learning how to live independently after 10 years of living at the shelter with her 17-year-old son.

“It would be a difficult transition for me because I do not have my GED yet, and I still need to learn some job skills,” Sanders said. “I love Ms. Kirk for the patience she has had with me and for giving me and my son a roof over our heads all these years.”

Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130329/west-englewood/south-side-womens-shelters-face-closure-due-city-fines#ixzz2Ox3UPwrS

Fannie Mae Regulator Sets No-Doc Modifications for Borrowers

By Clea Benson on March 27, 2013

 

Seriously delinquent borrowers with mortgages owned or backed by Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac will be able to reduce monthly payments without documenting finances under a program introduced by the companies’ regulator.

The move announced today by the Federal Housing Finance Agency is designed to stem losses to the U.S.-owned firms by letting borrowers at least 90 days behind on their loans bypass the administrative hurdles of typical loan modifications. Homeowners may still give their lender documents on financial hardships and can save more money by doing so, the agency said.

“This new option gives delinquent borrowers another path to avoid foreclosure,” Edward J. DeMarco, the FHFA’s acting director, said in a statement.

About two-thirds of U.S. home mortgages are backed by Washington-based Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of McLean, Virginia, which package loans into securities on which they guarantee payments of principal and interest. About 3.2 percent of mortgages they guarantee were at least 90 days in arrears in January, according to data from the two companies.

Borrowers and lenders have complained about the amount of paperwork required to ease loan terms under the Home Affordable Modification Program. The new effort is designed to ensure that borrowers will get some relief while waiting to hear whether they qualify for deeper aid under the existing HAMP program.

‘Unnecessary Friction’

“If this gets people into a modification and they perform, everybody wins,” Julia Gordon, director for housing finance and policy at the Center for American Progress, said in a telephone interview. “No-doc gets results, and in my view, HAMP should have required far less of this documentation to begin with. There’s been unnecessary friction.”

The Streamlined Modification Initiative will begin July 1 and end on August 1, 2015, the FHFA said. Borrowers must be at least 90 days delinquent, have a loan at least a year old and have less than 20 percent equity in their home to qualify.

Modified loans will have fixed interest rates and payment terms extended to 40 years, the FHFA said. Some borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth won’t be required to pay interest on a portion of the principal.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (FMCC) have been operating under U.S. conservatorship since September 2008, when they were seized by federal regulators amid losses on risky loans during the subprime mortgage crisis.

Since 2008, they’ve completed 1.3 million loan modifications and 1.4 million other foreclosure-prevention actions, including short sales and forbearance plans.

Strategic Defaults

The two companies have computer programs that can detect borrowers who are likely to try to default intentionally to get a streamlined modification, the FHFA said. Whether that will be enough to prevent so-called strategic defaults by borrowers looking to qualify for help remains to be seen, Jaret Seiberg, a senior policy analyst for Guggenheim Securities LLC’s Washington Research Group, wrote in a market commentary.

“We are cautious about whether these safeguards will work, but take it as an encouraging sign that FHFA has thought about the issue and has a plan to address this risk,” Seiberg wrote.

To contact the reporter on this story: Clea Benson in Washington at cbenson20@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Maura Reynolds at mreynolds34@bloomberg.net

Vocalo-Interview Chicago Grandmother Fights Foreclosure

Chicago Anti Eviction Campaign very own 90 year old Emma Harris,Atty. Keli Dudley and Matt Linas!

"Emma Harris didn't fall through a single crack. She got stomped down through those cracks...If you want to practice law, you don't treat anyone the way this woman has been treated." -Kelli Dudley

Emma Harris is a 90-year-old grandmother who has been battling the foreclosure of her apartment complex for almost 4 years. Matt Linas works with the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign and he followed Ms. Harris last fall as part of our Vocalo Storytellers workshop. He joins us in studio along with Kelli Dudley, a lawyer who specializes in foreclosures.

February 9, 2013 System of abuse: Homeowners fighting for their homes.

System of abuse: Homeowners fighting for their homes.

By 900poundgorilla

HELP IS A PHONE CALL AWAY!:) The words are from the Department of Housing and Urban development. The exclamation point and smiley face are mine. There is a referral service, and the operators are very courteous in between the polished and pre-recorded legal disclaimers. The website also will steer homeowners to resources in their local community. Sounds great. Helpful, right? But what if all that is less a resource than a means to status quo in the system. What if it has the best of intentions, but only offers the illusion of help for those tough and complex cases which seem alarmingly all too frequent?
The system is built upon some hard metrics and timelines, such as the time before foreclosure can be initiated, the time to an eviction. The homeowner and their case only remains relevant as long as they remain in their home. Once they are out of the home, it is pretty much a done deal, from the system’s point of view. For now, in Cook County, Sheriff Tom Dart has taken as much of a stand as he can against serious questions of impropriety and possibly illegality in the foreclosure crisis. His officers are necessary to enforce and oversee foreclosure evictions. But he has been under significant pressure from his superiors to comply with the letter of the law, the spirit notwithstanding.
Still, the growing impression among those close to the foreclosure issue, is that the system, either by default or design is structured to let the clock run out on homeowners, regardless of the merits of their case or complaint. Make no waves, in other words, and eventually the problem, and people, will simply go away.
“The great consensus,” observes Shirely Henderson, from Chicago Anti-eviction, a non-profit that helps homeowners fight foreclosure and eviction, “I’ve been coming to is that time is not on the side of the homeowner. Where is the concern for the fellow man? This is a human being. They expect them to go into foreclosure, accept it, find a lot to live in and go away.”
The case of Mike Henderson, on Chicago’s Westside illustrates that perfectly. His case hinges on the refusal of institutions to fully release all pertinent documents. HUD closed Henderson’s complaint in 2004, but reopened it later that same year. The case, however, remains in limbo. The officials close to Henderson’s case simply have not returned repeated calls from the media, Mr. Henderson or Chicago Anti-eviction. 900poundgorilla placed more than a dozen calls to HUD’s Dudley Williams, Russell Turner and Monica Dickson in Washington DC without a response. So much for resource, it would seem.
“The loan should not have closed, because NHS(Neighborhood Housing Services) never tendered funds to the title company,” Ms. Henderson(no relation to Michael)points out. That’s the 900 pound gorilla in the room.”
Neither Chicago Title nor NHS would or have commented on the failure to transfer the loan, nor explain how the loan closed at all in that case. To get clarification, 900poundgorilla reached out to 2nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti, and is awaiting a response from Alderman. In the meantime, Mike Henderson points to a system and culture which favors the banks, regardless of the merits of a homeowner faced with foreclosure. In court hearings, the judges gave hardly a passing consideration of Henderson’s meticulously maintained documentation, without rendering even an opinion.
“A black man can’t get angry,” Henderson said, “or they’ll put you away. I speak calmly and never above a whisper.”
And all the stakeholders in Henderson’s case have to do are to wait for the clock to run out in Henderson’s case. Time is fully on the side of the banks and courts. Even among those who hear about the case in the media. Their first reaction is automatic: What have these people done wrong. They must have done something wrong.
Society assumes that the banks will follow the letter of the law, despite the massive evidence to the contrary, particularly after the banking system’s culpability in the financial collapse and great recession. Even after all of that, with a near collapse from greed and outright criminality by banks and finacial institutions, the banks were massively bailed out by a government which then looked the other way. Not one banker has gone to jail, but millions have lost their homes and had their lives upended.
For Mary Bonelli, time is at a premium. Suffering from a serious illness, she has neither the energy nor the money to fight that ticking clock towards foreclosure and eviction from the home her family has owned since 1921. Mary’s case is not as unique as one may think. She furnishes the documents and statements to show Fifth Third bank simply stopped accepting her automatically debited payments, and that all of the money for those payments remains in her account. Regardless, as she was stonewalled for months by the bank, they were foreclosing on her behind the scenes.
Now, she is not so much fighting to keep her home, as to keep from being evicted, which is not necessarily the same fight, and not with the same institutions and authorities. Retired and disabled, requiring a walker to get around, and a drawer full of medications to live, she is at a critical disadvantage. There has been some indication of movement in Mary’s case, but only from the extraordinary effort by Mary, friends and anti-eviction groups.
Mary Bonelli and Mike Henderson are hardly alone in their situation, but feel very much alone in the struggle. But for the stalwart determination to dig in and fight with neighbors and over-burdened grassroots groups like Chicago Anti-eviction, NorthsidePOWER, Occupy Chicago, Communities United Against Foreclosure and Eviction, and El Centro Autonomo in Albany Park, the clock would run out for Mike, Mary and thousands like them around Chicago.
Even worse is that, like Mary, a simple error at a bank or lender can have disastrous ramifications for a homeowner who has done everything by the book. What is more, there is little support of sympathy in the system to hold the bank or lender accountable. It favors the lender, and holds the homeowner accountable for every detail and mistake as they navigate the costly and confusing maze to keep their home.
For Mike Henderson, he is exhausted and perplexed and fighting for every document, any sympathetic ear, and holding desperately to anyone who shows the least amount of interest in his case.
Among those stalwart supporters, Shirley Henderson from Chicago Anti-eviction is undaunted. “We will continue to protect his right to housing.”
But 10 years is a long time for anyone to fight. The struggle weighs heavily on a man who suffered a near fatal heart attack a few years ago, leaving him disabled. His wife’s health has suffered from the stress of all this as well. Their home is unfinished, and without heat and hot water is unsafe to live in, and that is the ultimate injustice in that unforgiving system.

Please sign and share We appreciate the President Obama speech on Ladders of Opportunity. We appreciate his acknowledgement of the work we have already begun fixing up vacant homes Now We Need President Obama to deliver resources so Community Control of rebuilding these vacant homes is mandated!

http://www.change.org/petitions/president-barack-obama-give-community-control-and-access-to-funds-for-ladders-of-opportunity#

President Barack Obama: Give Community Control and Access to funds for Ladders of Opportunity

www.change.org

In President Obama's State of the Union and Chicago Hyde Park Academy Address He made these statements around redevelopment of hardest hit...

Man in a corner… A 900poundgorilla exclusive By 900poundgorilla

Man in a corner… A 900poundgorilla exclusive
By 900poundgorilla




Chicago’s largely minority South and West sides have been forgotten, neglected and abandoned, with foreclosures eliminating what remains of the American Dream here
I learned long ago that a man in a corner is the most dangerous. It is the ultimate lesson of the street, that you always give your opponent ultimate respect, and always, always give them a way out-some way to save their dignity. Apparently the banks have never learned that lesson. They never anticipated Michael Henderson.
I ran into Michael last week on Chicago’s far south side at a meeting of Chicago Anti-Eviction, a grassroots group working to stem the destruction foreclosures have wrought on Chicago’s largely Black and Hispanic south and west sides. He latches onto you quickly.

Not in an awkward or uncomfortable, or even desperate way. Michael, wearing a well-worn black cap that reads, “Man of Faith.” He is a man of faith. He knows he can’t stand and face the banks and powerful alone. He has faith and persistence that friends and the community will help him in the fight of his life. A tall order for a man who nearly died several years ago from a massive heart attack. But Mike Henderson is fighting for his wife and the elegant red stone home that has been in his family for 34 years.




This week I visited Mr. Henderson’s home on Chicago’s West side. As I snapped several photographs of the house, he asked that I not take any pictures inside. As he led me through the door, the reason was readily apparent. Though it was almost 50 degrees outside, unseasonably warm for late January, it was much colder inside the Henderson House. Standing in the barren and unfinished front room, our breaths rose in the air, the of the past several days cold held and deepened by the old stone house.

It is hard to see where the repairs were done. Henderson, back in 2003 estimated it would cost $250,000 to fully rehab the historic 19th Century building, perhaps one of the most beautiful and ubiquitous on the West side. Henderson alleges that Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, a 501c3 non-profit talked him into $350,000 instead. So began a decade long battle for what Henderson believes is a complex scheme to steal his home from him. The Illinois State’s Attorney’s office has also begun an inquiry into Henderson’s case. As evidence, Henderson wields a daunting and meticulously prepared collection of documents.

“I’m not an educated man,” Henderson tells me. “I do everything by the book. He holds up a packet of papers regarding his case. His smile whimsically melancholic. “I make books.”


Fundamental to his case is, who actually owns the loan? The effort to discover that simple fact prompted an FBI inquiry several years back, and prompted Jesse Jackson Jr and Senator Dick Durbin to take an interest. A letter of demand to supply Henderson with documents to support his claim seems to have prompted the foreclosure proceedings, a curious thing since he never received any statement, but was making good faith payments to a second bank. That bank accepted the payments, which would not have covered even the insurance of the property, but never questioned the shortfall. In fact, they sent him a confirmation, which he shows with the bank’s letterhead, that the payments were sufficient to cover both insurance and prpoerty taxes, an fiction by any reasonable accounting. He also challenged letters sent by the bank that the loan was paid in full. Henderson sent three letters in total asking them to recognize the mistake. Each time he received the same reply: The loan was paid in full.

The evidence he presents is carefully documented in his growing stack of collected and organized papers. For example, upon a cursory examination of the documents, NHS of Chicago gave Henderson the loan of $350,726, at least on paper, on May 30, 2003. On June 9, that same year, NHS placed a genuine lien on his property for the same amount. They refused to provide the date, month and year that they disbursed the $350,000 to him, however, because, he contends, that would lead to the conclusion that the lien was fraudulent.

Surrounding the core question of who actually owns the loan, and what happened with all of the money, a perplexing maze emerges that leads the most skeptical minds to a disturbing conclusion. But fighting that battle in unsympathetic, and even obstructionist lower courts is daunting for poor and working class people. Complicating all of this, Henderson’s heart attack in 2009 that left him unable to work any longer. That and his fixed and limited income leaves him at a distinct disadvantage, and unable to afford legal assistance. Instead he relies on the community and something else, and a detailed collection of supporting evidence copied and recopied at a local Kinkos. That cost alone weighs heavily on the couple’s day to day existence, but at least keeps them in their home-for now.

“We don’t have an attorney,” he remarks with a smart cock of the head. “We only got God, and God is a top flight attorney.”

With that he leads me to a small alcove to one side of the long, open and spacious first floor. The drywall is unfinished, and a rush of icy-cold wind comes through the house at the floor. Several sturdy orange and green extension cords snake about the hardwood floors. Two of them connect simple space heaters facing the alcove, which is modestly covered by heavy drapes. Their bed is inside that small room, covered with layers of blankets and electric blankets. The couple spends most of their time in bed together in an effort to remain modestly warm, and to survive the winter temperatures.

By Wednesday arctic weather had once again moved into Chicago, with temperatures well below the freezing mark. At the Chicago Anti-eviction meeting last night, attended by a representative from the State’s Attorney’s office, I asked Michael if he at least has hot water coming to the building. Without missing a beat, he looked up and remarked, “If I boil some.”

More on this story to come…

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Dr. King/Organizing for Action/CAEC Day of Service Photos