Some People Just Will Not Give Up (No Matter What)…
And bless their little hearts (good ones at that)
Take the story of Maegan Donovan Nikolic: a homeowner who I wrote about in a June, 2014, Huffpost piece, Distressed Homeowners Need Lots of Help. Her story was representative of millions of others driven from their homes by an organized assault led by Big Boy Bankers, supported by sleazy cronies in law firms — a/k/a — foreclosure mills that seemed to pop up like roaches in a Brooklyn tenement (FYI: I grew up in one).
Unfortunately, most homeowners — worn down by the assault — simply threw in the towel, accepting a fate that led many into an early grave.
Not Maegan…
Like the proverbial tree that sways in the wind but doesn’t snap Maegan — with young son in tow — stood the test of time and continues to crusade against the Dark Forces and these forces not only have survived, but thrived. Third-party investors — which includes a scandal-ridden Goldman Sachs — continue to snap up so-called “Distressed Assets” quicker than you can say, well, distressed assets.
Still a part of Occupy Fights Foreclosures (remember them?); a coalition that crosses political, cultural and racial lines Maegan maintains a stance that’s akin to Marianne of French Revolution fame.
My original Huffpost piece included this evergreen quote from Senator Elizabeth Warren; one that should be emblazoned in everyone’s brain come a new economic crisis and Main Street meltdown.
“The government’s response to the foreclosure crisis is the equivalent of trying to put out a forest fire with an eye dropper.”
Now, to the original posting:
While the foreclosure crisis continues to ravage communities around the country there’s a pressing need for homeowner education and empowerment. Maegan Nikolic, a single mom in Whittier California, can attest to that. Since 2010 she’s been run through the foreclosure wringer. She’s woken up to find notices of default tacked on to her door, hired a succession of lawyers to try and find some way to resolve the mess but at every turn ran into a brick wall. After the tears, the stress, the overwhelming anxiety Maegan with her small boy in tow and threatened with a forcible eviction left her house of 17 years.
Maegan’s story has been distilled down to a statistic; one that shows up on industry data bases like CoreLogic and Realty Trac but like all statistics they don’t reveal the faces behind the numbers. While trillions were lost in housing values the human cost, measured in lost dreams, dislocation, divorce, depression, suicide, addiction, is incalculable. Since the housing bubble burst in 2007 there are upwards of five million stories similar to Maegan’s, and if you’re watching too much Fox Business News and CNBC you might think that this just an old bad dream and we’re now back on the royal road to economic prosperity.
Well think again.
“What Housing Recovery?” a May 8th New York Times op-ed written by three economists made note of these sobering statistics: “more than 10 million Americans, spread across 23 states, live in zip codes where between 43 percent and 76 percent of homeowners are under water.” And try this one on for size: “9.8 million households still owe more on their mortgages than the market value of their homes. That’s one fifth of all mortgaged homes” An unreasonably large proportion are in African-American and Latino neighborhoods.
Yes, millions of Americans in homes euphemistically termed “distressed assets” are living lives of unrelenting anxiety and stress; many are desperately engaged in futile paper-chase efforts to modify loans to bring down monthly payments to affordable levels. In states where courts oversee foreclosure proceedings (“judicial foreclosures”) homeowners may find themselves steamrollered by well-prepared lawyers from so-called foreclosure mills working on behalf of major banks, servicers, or the GSE’s, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As Florida’s infamous “rocket dockets” highlighted, legal proceedings may rise to the level of “star chambers” where homeowners are considered guilty as charged and eviction the usual outcome. In states where foreclosures are not overseen by the courts (“non-judicial states”) a homeowner who finds him or herself falling behind in mortgage payments may suddenly find their property listed for sale at an upcoming auction care of a foreclosure trustee with an ominous sounding name like Cal-West Reconveyance.
A homeowner casting around for a capable lawyer to deal with a loan modification or a pending foreclosure may often face something akin to the search for the Holy Grail. There are lots of attorneys who’ll take a homeowner’s case but many are ill-equipped to do battle in an area of law that’s constantly changing. Maegan Nikolic learned this lesson the hard way, forking over $89,000 to three lawyers, each in turn screwed up her case, then turfed responsibility by telling her she should sue the others for malpractice. A homeowner’s outreach platform could be useful in publicizing links to valuable legal resources including the aforementioned National Association of Consumer Advocates that maintains a network of lawyers, many of whom have gone through the rigors of anti-foreclosure training at Max Gardner’s legendary “Bankruptcy Boot Camp.” Law schools offer another resource with student populated outreach programs, the best known being Harvard’s Housing Law Clinic, which dispatches law students into the community to defend at-risk homeowner’s from eviction attempts by banks and lenders.
Homeowner’s in distress really need a comprehensive easily digestible internet resource and it would be a mitzvah, as we say in Yiddish, if some national non-profit consumer agency would take on this challenge. Information is empowering and armed with knowledge a dazed and confused homeowner might be in a better position to decide on a course of action when faced with the devastating prospect of an eviction.
Referencing the last paragraph:
There are still no real on-line resources for dazed and confused homeowners; even less in the way of competent lawyers with the notable exception of those that have gone through Max Gardner’s still thriving Bankruptcy Boot Camp.
Update: Maegan is now living in a rented home with her son but still ready to do battle.
Like Boudicca, the Celtic Warrior Princess of legend, Maegan is following a path trod by women who fought in groups like the fabled Mujeres Libres(Free Women); units that fought fascism during the Spanish Civil War, or more recently, the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units, in Northern Syria, that remain on the front line in the fight against ISIS.
The fight against the forces of Foreclosure, Inc. require the same sort of commitment and battling spirit.
Joel Sucher is a co-founder of Pacific Street Films (together with Steven Fischler) and has written for a number of platforms including American Banker, In These Times, Huffington Post and Observer. com. He is currently working on a streaming series, The Ocwen Chronicles.
