Largest Village In New York Closes Chase Account To Protest Foreclosures

The Village of Hempstead, a relatively low-income, minority-heavy municipality on Long Island, pulled its money out of JP Morgan Chase bank on Tuesday as part of a statewide campaign protesting the bank's dismal mortgage modification record.

"It's important that Chase and all the big corporate banks start to heed the minority communities," Hempstead Mayor Wayne Hall said in an interview. "There's a lot of power in the minority communities. If we all stick together and start withdrawing our money out of these big banks and start putting it into more favorable banks, Chase will review its procedures for modifications."

Nearly one in every four U.S. homeowners with mortgages -- or 10.8 million people -- currently owe more on their home than it's worth. In Hempstead, almost 4 percent of homes are in the foreclosure process, according to Dealbook, a rate four times Nassau County average. While data on Chase loans in Hempstead are hard to come by, in nearby New York City, only six percent of the 1,027 borrowers with Chase mortgages who asked for help in the past year were granted a permanent modification, according to a report released recently by the Center for New York City Neighborhoods. Moreover, a full 80 percent of these homeowners have not even received an offer for a loan modification.

Chase's national modification record is not much better. Of 233,653 trial modifications started by Chase under the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) launched in 2009, the bank now has just 71,657 active permanent modifications, according to the latest data from the Treasury Department.

One Hempstead homeowner, Maribel Toure, said she has been trying and failing to modify her mortgage loan with Chase bank for two and a half years.

"It has been an unhealthy experience, with bad communication and no response," she told NY Communities for Change, a coalition of working families in low- and moderate-income communities. "I have to work 16-hour shifts in the hospital to make extra money, and I've asked for a modification three times, but have gotten no straight answer -- I'm stuck in limbo."

A Chase spokesperson said the bank has "served the financial needs of the Village of Hempstead well" for more than 30 years.

"In New York, Chase has offered 50,000 modifications to struggling borrowers and has prevented seven foreclosures for every one foreclosure here," he said. "This past weekend, we met face-to-face with 2,200 borrowers in Brooklyn to help them stay in their homes."

The Village of Hempstead is the first municipality in the country to close a bank account due to foreclosure policies. But a spokesperson for NY Communities for Change said many local governments throughout the state are planning to close their Chase accounts in the coming months. New York City Councilman Jumaane Williams marched into a Park Avenue Chase bank in February to close his account, and major unions have also announced their intention to pull their pension-fund money out of JP Morgan Chase.

"Banks like Chase should be ashamed of themselves," Hempstead Deputy Mayor Henry Conyers said in a press release. "They were bailed out with taxpayer money - now look what they are doing to the taxpayer: foreclosing instead of modifying."

Comments

[bdzdean]

04:34 PM on 05/25/2011

If more towns, communities and individuals would close their accounts with these big banks going ramped on foreclosures of your fellow neighbors. It would without question make these to big to fail banks think about what they are doing to families, communities, and our home values in general. I commend the Village board and trustees of Hempsted in their decision. I can only hope other village elected officals will follow in this boycott in order to try to protect their village and county property owners.

[Yvonne Perez]

06:06 PM on 05/11/2011

Whatever everybody think about banks are nothing but users of your money and on top they charge for using your money!! That the really thruth. All the banks are robbers!

[Godfearing]

01:27 PM on 04/14/2011

Can you imagine, if you won a $50 million lottery, there is no safe bank to put it in.

[Siebenstein]

07:06 AM on 04/14/2011

I wonder why anyone would still have account with the biggest fravdster in America.

[Humanitari Leandro]

07:47 AM on 04/08/2011

Great!
Show tg
Hem the cash is NOT theirs...

[rikster]

08:10 PM on 04/06/2011

it's great to hear..! the Chase bank promotes legal theft...

[joebiteme]

02:13 PM on 04/06/2011

That will hurt... what did they withdraw their $126.42

[u0281837]

04:58 PM on 04/06/2011

$12.5 million. A start.

[joebiteme]

05:24 PM on 04/06/2011

its a black community it must have been feral funds that they were given

[Georgia1992]

07:19 PM on 04/06/2011

What are you saying? Don't underestimate the black community.

[joebiteme]

08:21 PM on 04/06/2011

don't underestimate them!! I could I they have 50% of the prision population and 40% on the welfare and foodstamp rolls

[realitybaby]

11:37 AM on 04/06/2011

let me tell ya - Chase has built 3 brand new banking facilities down the road I take home - THREE they gotta be within 5-10 miles of each other - AND THEY PURCHASED THE PLOTS OF LAND THEY BUILT ON.

They can revamp mortgages to help people stay in their homes - ISNT THAT WHY WE BAILED THEM OUT!

[Shaddup]

02:52 PM on 04/06/2011

No. We bailed them out so they can afford to put an empty branch on every corner of the state (IL).

[scootball]

11:18 AM on 04/06/2011

I have thought of advocating this for large organizations for a year now and am really glad to see somebody has started. Banks with such atrocious behavior should be held accountable. They won't really listen to people, but they will listen if they start losing money because large organizations close their accounts based on principles. The next thing is to organize a large group of individuals (at least 10 million) to simultaneously withdraw all their cash from specific institutions who have equally poor records as a form of public protest. People need to retake power from greedy corporations.

[jaredbrain]

10:29 AM on 04/06/2011

We're hanging over this country to the corporations more and more and they stick it to us more and more. The question isn't "why are corporations doing these things", its "why do we keep letting them"

and then I remember we have the GOP

[The Right is Wrong]

10:17 AM on 04/06/2011

I never bank with the Big Banks.

Never, ever, ever!

[Pepper Hahn]

10:03 AM on 04/06/2011

As I continue reading all of these posts, this phrase comes to mind... Useful Idiots! Have any of you heard of Stephen Lerner? He works for SEIU and is using all of your fears and insecurities to try and dismantle the financial system. Think about it this way...if the banks fall and the stock market crumbles, where are all of your retirement and pensions going to be? Where have your morals gone? YOU made a decision to borrow money from these banks knowing that you didn't make enough to pay it back. Now you want the bank to modify what you clearly couldn't afford in the first place. Does anyone use their Common Sense anymore? When will people wake up and realize that they are just as much to blame for even trying to borrow the money as the people who lent it. Take responsibility for your actions and stop blaming the Big Bad Banks. You messed up... now deal with it! P.S.- Check out Stephen Lerner's article on The Nation site to see that you are all being played... Useful Idiots.

[UnknownSolider]

10:39 AM on 04/06/2011

Dear Clown
 
Modifying a loan means you will pay back what you can until you are in a better situation. Over the life a 30 year mortgage banks get back 2 dollars for every dollar they loan out. Hey Clown do you understand that if they foreclose on a home where people could pay something that they LOSE money, but if the person had PMI (private mortgage insurance), the insurance company pays out on the defaulted loan.........
 
 Hey Clown do you know he picks up the cost for those insurance payouts the Big Banks are collecting....... Yes Clown you and I do, so guess what Clown I'd rather them modify the loan, keep the family in their home, and let them pay the money out on the back end of the loan when the majority of the payment should going toward principle, and I'd throw in one more rider..... if the person sells the home for a profit before the loan is paid off the bank is entitled to a portion of that profit.
 
Yes the Banks are Big (Too Big) and Bad

[kaj74]

10:56 AM on 04/06/2011

You’re omitting the fact that inflation, and NY “luxury tax”, has crippled already struggling families, and made them destitute.
I do my family’s shopping, and I watched my grocery bill almost double in a year, yet my purchase habits did not change.
Gas is almost $4.00 a gallon, and will only rise as the market adjusts for the decline in need for home heating.
And for the proponents on smoking bans, you must really want to pay more taxes, since NY is trying to balance the budget on the backs of smokers, with the cigarette tax being near $5.00/pack.
How about that juice tax? The Soda tax? The repeal on tax free clothing purchases greater than $100.00?
These are some of the ways that New Yorkers are being bled dry, death by a thousand cuts.
And God forbid someone lost their job and became collateral damage of the financial meltdown.
To insinuate that everyone who is now struggling to keep their home is having problems because they “borrowed money from these banks knowing that you didn't make enough to pay it back” is a false statement. Many people, who are struggling, are living in a system that is guaranteeing them failure, all while struggling to hang on in an environment created by the same greedy people, that they are paying to bail out.
But as you said so eloquently, thanks for being a useful idiot.

[Jesse P. Steinberg]

10:01 AM on 04/06/2011

Now for more people to do this against JPM, BoA, Wells Fargo and Citi.

[DougBlessYou]

09:31 AM on 04/06/2011

Great for Hempstead. There needs to be a lot more towns doing this though to even put a dent into JPM, they are GIGANTIC!!!

[camelias and sweet tea]

09:30 AM on 04/06/2011

Good for the Village of Hempstead..it is about time. Use your local banks and credit unions.