Landlord in Foreclosure Gives Keys to Homeless Tenants
June 26th, 2011
When Stacy Hill, a Chicago schoolteacher struggling to maintain her mortgage payments on a rental home, lost her battle for a loan modification, she decided to make a statement rather than just turning over her keys. Instead of handing the keys into the lender, she handed them over to a homeless mother and her children who moved into the property on June 17 of this year[1]. The move was orchestrated by a low-income housing advocacy group, the leader of which explained the decision as “playing matchmaker and put[ting] homeless people into people-less housing.” The lender who is foreclosing on the property, Deutsche Bank, filed a foreclosure suit in 2009 but has refused, as has Hill, to comment on the situation, though Hill’s mother has described her decision as a reaction to her inability to “get any relief” on her mortgage payments via loan modification or steady tenants. Foreclosure proceedings on the home and others in the area are projected to be stalled for months because documents in many of the cases have been altered. Although Hill has filed a suit against the law firm handling her foreclosure, she allegedly does not want the building back. “As far as we’re concerned,” said her mother, “this home belongs to [the new family] and the community.”
Is this a good temporary solution for that property? Should Hill have the right to give away a property that she may not technically own? Is it a good permanent solution?
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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26cnchomeless.html
June 27th, 2011 at 7:48 AM
More and more victims of forclosure status need to do the same thing and help the needy. Let the greedy banks have “fun” evicting the new dwellers who actually have no other place to live, than on the street or dangerous homeless shelters mixed with drunks and criminals. Make a law that would prohibit any homeless person from the forclosed property by law officials. The banks are using illegal tactics to push forclosure rather than modify the loan or forgive the lost payments and extend the loan longer, yet also lower the interest loan payments. The forclosures will not stop until the banks shape up toward the borrowers who have given the banks the business in the first place. The banks would have not grown so huge without the customers who have paid years of loans toward their home purchases.
June 27th, 2011 at 11:53 AM
This is a good deal for everyone except the landlord, who loses her equity and good credit. The bank can write off the loss, the homeless get housed, the community organization can get more donations by showing the good job it’s doing. I believe Congress has balked at having bankruptcy courts force banks to modify loans, or at doing anything to require banks to modify loans (Lou Dobbs was right about the war on the middle class, but now he’s just right wing). The solution, since no governmental body is going to come up with extra money to buy vacant houses and give them away in a homesteading program (although they can find the money to tear the same houses down after they’ve become uninhabitable and unsafe) is to revert to the old custom of tithing so as to put congregation members in housing, and this is sort of a secular version of that old custom. It helps build community ties as well as relieving crowded homes and crowded lists of homes for sale.
June 27th, 2011 at 1:28 PM
Stacy Hill is the owner of the property, NOT THE BANK, too many people including brokers/agents lose sight of this fact. She may do whatever that legally entitles her to do. The Bank has its own legal rights and responsibilites.
Legally, morally and ethically we represent the person that is on the deed to the property as brokers/agents. They pay us our commission not the bank unless the bank has foreclosed and we represent them. Even in a short sale, while the bank approves the transaction with their own apprasals, choice of inspections, fees they will approve etc we do NOT represent the bank. We represent the person on the deed. We just attempt to facilitate a bad situation in the least upsetting manner possible.
Just as tenants don’t recognize usually, the owner of the property still has all the rights of the owner. They can evict a tenant for failure to pay the rent, forgive rent, etc etc. Just because a property is in foreclosure that doesn’t give a tenant the right to NOT pay rent.
In California where I am a broker, the bank or whomever buys the property at sale is NOW responsible to the tenant for the security deposit. They also have to follow the normal landlord/tenant laws AS DOES the tenant.
June 27th, 2011 at 1:32 PM
What’s the question? Wondering if it’s allright to screw a system that created this mess in the first place and is still trying to screw everyone at every given chance? Hmmmm…….it took me about .02 seconds to come to the conclusion that yes, this is perfectly acceptable.
June 27th, 2011 at 1:44 PM
“Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong…” (Buffalo Springfield). Each side is trying to ‘out-weasel’ the other.
“Giving away” something you don’t own is theft, regardless of your opinion of the rightful Owner.
Using or possessing someone else’s property and denying them rightful access to it, is also theft.
Accepting money created out of nothingness by government agencies is insanely wrong and another poor financial choice; one which hurts everyone in the long term.
CREATING that money in the first place is a ‘Mortal Sin’ against the People who gave them such power, as it can only lead to our eventual destruction as a nation. We the People deserve saner choices from our representatives.