A 90-year-old woman in Southwest Miami-Dade is facing foreclosure on the modest home she's lived in for about 57 years, reports WSVN.
"Where am I going to go? I'm 90 years old!" said Rosalee Green, who raised 11 children in the single-story home in Perrine. Green said a reverse mortgage allowed her to take a lump payment against the home's equity that she wouldn't have to pay back, but the lending company that loaned the money now claims debris near the home is a code violation that nullifies the mortgage, her attorney said.
"For them to find a little technical flaw, which is what they're trying to hang their hat on, and displace a 90-year-old lady from her home, we just feel is bad faith," attorney Eric Stein told WSVN.
"They said that I didn't have to pay anything until, if I die, whoever lives here would take over, and so, I figured that was it," Green said.
Son Dale Green said his mother took out the reverse mortgage because she doesn't have a steady income, and the family has been "doing whatever we can to keep up with things going on around here." WSVN reports the out-of-state lending company said Green "may" be able to avoid foreclosure if she cleans up the debris and has been keeping up-to-date on property taxes.
"It's a mess," Green said from her home, which has an assessed value of $60,612 according to the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser. "I don't think it's fair. If I would have known [this would happen], I would have never, never [have signed for the mortgage]."
Green isn't the oldest woman to face down a bank in a home she's owned for years. Several weeks ago, sheriff's deputies and movers who arrived to evict a person from a North Atlanta home refused to follow through when they found 103-year-old Vinia Hall living there along with her 83-year-old daughter Vita Lee. In Detroit, 101-year-old Texana Hollis was allowed back into the home she'd lived in for six decades after being evicted days earlier because her son failed to pay the mortgage.