10 Million Americans Have Had Their Homes Taken Away by the Banks -- Often at the Point of a Gun

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/investigations/10-million-americans-foreclosed-neighborhoods-devastated



We cautiously ascend the staircase, the pitch black of the boarded-up house pierced only by my companion’s tiny circle of light. At the top of the landing, the flashlight beam dances in a corner as Quafin, who offered only her first name, points out the furnace. She is giddy; this house -- unlike most of the other bank-owned buildings on the block -- isn’t completely uninhabitable.
It had been vacated, sealed, and winterized in June 2010, according to a notice on the wall posted by BAC Field Services Corporation, a division of Bank of America. It warned: “entry by unauthorized persons is strictly prohibited.” But Bank of America has clearly forgotten about the house and its requirement to provide the “ maintenance and security” that would ensure the property could soon be reoccupied. The basement door is ajar, the plumbing has been torn out of the walls, and the carpet is stained with water. The last family to live here bought the home for $175,000 in 2002; eight years later, the bank claimed an improbable $286,100 in past-due balances and repossessed it.

It’s May 2012 and we’re in Woodlawn, a largely African American neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. The crew Quafin is a part of dubbed themselves the HIT Squad, short for Housing Identification and Target. Their goal is to map blighted, bank-owned homes with overdue property taxes and neighbors angry enough about the destruction of their neighborhood to consider supporting a plan to repossess on the repossessors.

“Anything I can do,” one woman tells the group after being briefed on its plan to rehab bank-owned homes and move in families without houses. She points across the street to a sagging, boarded-up place adorned with a worn banner -- “Grandma’s House Child Care: Register Now!” -- and a disconnected number. There are 20 banked-owned homes like it in a five-block radius. Records showed that at least five of them were years past due on their property taxes.

Where exterior walls once were, some houses sport charred holes from fires lit by people trying to stay warm. In 2011, two Chicago firefighters died trying to extinguish such a fire at a vacant foreclosed building. Now, houses across the South Side are pockmarked with red Xs, indicating places the fire department believes to be structurally unsound. In other states -- Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New York, to name recent examples -- foreclosed houses have taken to exploding after bank contractors forgot to turn off the gas.

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. Well that may be, but at least we don't live in some hell-hole like Holland...

Sorry 'bout that. Sometimes the idiocy clings from other posts.

& R

[xchrom]

2. do i wanna know...or should i let it pass? nt

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. I certainly wish I hadn't read it.

[Brickbat]

3. Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.

And sometimes, apparently, you get both.

[marmar]

4. When do we reach that point of, "Enough"! ?

[intaglio]

5. Even before opening this thread I knew it was a cut and paste job from Alternet

Yes the loans and subsequent repossessions are a scandal but adding "... at the point of a gun," is senseless. Are we to assume that those who went along peacefully are somehow suffer less or are less deserving than the tiny minority who had weapons pointed at them?

Yet another attempt by an Alternet author to make the story edgy and right-on detracts from the human tragedies caused by this fiasco.