Your Voices: Military Family Faces Foreclosure

This is the second installment of Dispatches from the Displaced, in which one homeowner shares his or her story of facing foreclosure to represent the over 10,000 houses that are foreclosed each weekday. Read yesterday's story from Connie in Queen's Creek, AZ here.

Have a story on how a home foreclosure has affected you, your family or your friends? Send it to us at [e-mail], and sign up here to receive updates on the feature as it progresses.

Today's testimonial comes from a military family. Carol Ann Smith has a son serving in Iraq and a husband who served in Vietnam.

I have a daughter who is mentally ill and my husband and I are raising her two children. The cost of her treatment and the care of the children made it difficult to pay the bills. My husband taught Algebra and Geometry in the public schools and I am a second shift computer operator.

In desperate circumstances we refinanced our home with HSBC at a 12% rate, thinking that we could refinance in a year. Then, my husband had a stroke and had to take early retirement. We quit paying our mortgage and filed bankruptcy.

HSBC has offered an 8% rate, but they added $18,000 to our $180,000 mortgage, raising the loan amount to $208,000. The house would not appraise for more that $180,000.

We received this offer in a letter. The payment is still too high. I have tried to call HSBC and left at least 20 or 30 messages, but they do not return my calls (we have signed a waiver through our attorney allowing direct contact.) If they would work with us on the payment, we would be able to stay in our home. It is just frustrating that they won't return my calls.

No one placed a gun to our head and made us make this terrible loan, but we are willing to pay back every cent if they would only lower the rate to make the payment something we can afford. Otherwise, HSBC will own a home that needs quite a bit of work, in a neighborhood where several homes are already for sale.

My husband is a Vietnam veteran and my son is currently in Iraq. We are good citizens that have faced life changing events. I pray for everyone going through the anxiety and stress of losing a home. Ultimately, we are all in this together.

Today, while Smith stares down foreclosure, over 10,000 people will lose their homes. Today also marks the launch of the Home Defenders campaign run by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. Homeowners in seven cities across the country, including New York and Los Angeles, have banded together to fight foreclosure with acts of civil disobedience. These so-called homesteaders will risk arrest by staying in their homes while banks and law enforcement inevitably attempt to throw them out.

Share a story of how the housing crisis has affected you by emailing [e-mail]. And SIGN UP HERE to receive updates when we publish new stories.

For testimonials from these homesteaders and others facing foreclosure, take a look at Brave New Foundation's new site, Fighting For Our Homes.

Find out more about Dispatches from the Displaced, HuffPost's Eyes&Ears series of reader-submitted foreclosure stories.

Comments

[Colmore]

Who actually "wins" in situations like this? It would make more sense for the lender and borrower to sit down to work out an aggreeable payment. Wouldn't the lenders still make money at 6% interest, rather than NO INTEREST at 12% with nobody able to make their payments? Greed is the problem in this. Common sense would save many. many heartaches at this time. My heart goes out to anyone who is losing their home. Just wish someone could come up with a sensible solution.

[lj9283]

Goes back to the whole "mortgage backed securities" business. The bank doesn't own the Mortgage, it has been sold as part of some "derivative" security to investors who purchased the security at an expected rate return of the average the mortgages that were included in that "derivative" security offering.

The banks don't hold the mortgages, some Hedge Fund investor does. It's all just scr*wed up.

[PlayTOE]

"HSBC has offered an 8% rate, but they added $18,000 to our $180,000 mortgage, raising the loan amount to $208,000. The house would not appraise for more that $180,000."

What is the $18,000 for?
This is a GOUGE and intended to make the house unsellable to lock these people into their plight.

The sad part ... the banks give out bonuses to the people who write up these mortgage rules that destroy people's lives.

[Choicelady]

Several banks in Western NY had a long history of demanding $10K from small businesses just to APPLY for a loan. If the loan was refused (and it often was) the applicant LOST the $10K. That was in the 1990s, and it went on for years. Now apparently they've transferred the "application fee" to homeowners.