Stop Foreclosures Now! ACORN's Anti-Foreclosure Campaign Escalates to Include Civil Disobedience

Facing an impending foreclosure, Rosa and Juan Rico of the San Francisco Bay Area have been trying to work with their bank for months to get a modification of their loan. Without that, they could be the next family on the street as a result of the economic crisis facing the country. But the bank just kept giving them the runaround.

So Rosa and Juan, with backing from 40 Oakland ACORN members, moved themselves into a local branch of the bank on January 15th, complete with a cot and sleeping bags in order to press their demand that the bank work with them and ACORN to modify the loan and keep them in their home.

Unsurprisingly, the bank managers immediately called the police and kicked ACORN and the Ricos out pretty quickly. It's clear that when banks decide to move swiftly they can, but it is sad that with the Ricos they are swift only in saying "No!"

It is not hyperbole to say that the foreclosure crisis lies at the very heart of the broader economic collapse. The glut of foreclosed properties on the market forced housing prices into a tailspin, and banks loaded up with mortgage-backed securities and complex derivatives, unable to value or sell these assets, stopped lending to each other and the credit markets froze up, triggering the broader economic morass. A broad and successful economic recovery is impossible without directly addressing the record foreclosure rate that lies at its heart.

In 2008 2.3 million families faced foreclosure proceedings, the highest number since the Great Depression. Though the cost to individual families is hard to measure, the cost to our economy is staggering: using the Joint Economic Committee estimate of $78,000 per foreclosure, the cost to the US economy was at least $156 billion in 2008.

If we do not take any action, Credit Suisse predicts that there will be between 8 and 9 million foreclosures in the next four years, at a potential cost to the economy of $702 billion. Simply put, addressing the foreclosure crisis must be at the heart of any economic recovery plan.

However, since the crisis hit, the response has been a patchwork of voluntary, half-baked, and disjointed policies topped off with a $350 billion give-away to the companies that created this mess in the first place. Given the urgency of the crisis and the lack of attention paid to the families bearing the brunt of the economic meltdown, ACORN is taking its foreclosure campaign to a new level of militancy.

Foreclosure Campaign Strategy
The foreclosure crisis touches all aspects of the economic meltdown and as such requires a comprehensive solution. A comprehensive solution requires a comprehensive campaign. ACORN's strategy has two objectives: help affected families stay in their homes and create the political will necessary to implement a comprehensive solution in the face of the full court press lobbying effort the financial industry is running - an effort that cuts homeowners out of any recovery package.

Thus ACORN's campaign is working to put the human faces of foreclosure victims front and center while escalating the campaign tactics to include civil disobedience aimed at keeping people from losing their homes. Everything is on the table: disruption of sales, disruption of banking business, even refusing to be evicted or moving families back into their foreclosed homes. The urgency of the crisis demands no less.

Recent ACORN Campaign Activity
On January 15th, ACORN held actions in about 25 cities aimed at disrupting the sales of foreclosed homes. This included 75 people on the courtroom steps in Baltimore who stopped the sales of at least 50 homes that day and 40 people in Nassau County on Long Island who bid "$0" repeatedly as homes came up and helped at least one family keep their home. There is also good video of actions in North Carolina and of the Baltimore event.

On Jan 19th, as part of the MLK Day Call To Service, ACORN members in 30 cities organized door-to-door outreach efforts in distressed communities hit hard by the crisis looking for families facing foreclosure. ACORN volunteers served tens of thousands of families, collected petition signatures in support of Obama and ACORN's demand for a 90-day moratorium, and invited residents to join ACORN's "Homesteading" foreclosure campaign.

Austin King, the director of ACORN's Financial Justice Center, went on Fox Business News to talk about the campaign in the belly of the beast and Ben Ehrenriech at The Nation covered aspects of our work in a recently published article on fight back efforts across the country.

This week we're launching a petition asking the Obama Administration to adopt a set of short-term and long-term steps to address the crisis. Please take a minute to sign the petition and join the campaign to halt foreclosures.

But the biggest escalation of this campaign will occur over the first three weeks of February as ACORN members and local activists launch an effort to keep foreclosure victims in their homes.

Fighting Back - Homesteading and "Home Defender Teams"
Despite the refreshing change in attitude towards the plight of families facing foreclosure from the Obama Administration, it is clear that there continues to be tremendous opposition from the financial services industry and Wall Street to any plan that truly helps homeowners.

Therefore, ACORN members are launching a Homesteading effort as part of the comprehensive foreclosure campaign. Rolling out during the month of February, it will help families threatened with foreclosures to stay in their homes, or in some cases, to reoccupy their homes. ACORN members will occupy their homes in growing numbers of cities around the country in acts of civil disobedience designed to force the issue.

ACORN is working with its membership and activists around the country to build "Home Defender Teams". These teams will be prepared to mobilize on short notice to peacefully help defend a family's right to stay in their homes until a fair solution to the crisis is put into place by the new Administration. We are recruiting allies and elected officials to support our efforts and call for a full and comprehensive solution to this crisis.

We are escalating this campaign both to help save individual families' homes, but also to win a foreclosure moratorium - some needed breathing room - while we push for a comprehensive solution to this crisis.

Look for a formal announcement of the Home Defender teams at the beginning of February, complete with a link to the on-line form that people who want to ensure that hard-hit families can stay in their homes until a common-sense solution to the crisis is put in place can use to join in. In the meantime, sign the petition to the Obama administration in order to fight back against Wall Street interests blocking needed reform from being enacted.

Comments

[ronson]

I think I see where you're going with this--oh the possibilities. If I follow you, I should go out and buy, let's say, a brand new Ferrari, not worry about whether or not I can make the payments, then demand my evil financiers restructure my loan when I can't make the payments--and if they won't, I'll live in the car and dare them to take it. Luckily I'd still have my wife and kids to camp out at the bank that holds my mortgage so we could cover both, but then what about a single parent household? Limits your options I suppose. I can see this tactic applied at utility companies, retail stores and even restaurants--"I'm only paying 50 cents for that Big Mac--don't make me bring my sleeping bag in here..." Why should I let something like income get in the way of my rights to housing, transportation, a big screen TV and a healthy meal?

I'm sorry for the Ricos, but you're disingenuous at best when you paint everyone as a victim in this mess. Let me know when the new administration comes up with a "fair solution" to this crisis--and let me know what "fair" means while you're at it.

[MoleManUV]

Civil disobedience to prevent families from being forced onto the streets obviously is not a first choice for an effective national response to the foreclosure crisis. The problem, however, is that Congress has yet to give literally millions of distressed homeowners a better alternative. Certainly, they cannot rationally expect to rely on the voluntary cooperation of the banking community to renegotiate the toxic Alt-A and other adjustable rate mortgages that are bringing misery and homelessness to thousands upon thousands of homeowners. Remember these are the same bankers who willingly participated in the purchase and securitization of these toxic debts. They will not simply sit down and agree to surrender their anticipated profits (or increase their existent losses) even if common sense would suggest that reduced profit or loss through renegotiation would at least guaranty a far better prospect of an ongoing income stream while avoiding the expense of foreclosure proceedings. It won't happen. So, absent Congressional action, Home Defender Teams become the default, which is exactly what happened in the 1930s, when neighborhoods banded together to put families back into their homes. Is it right? You can argue about that all day long. Is it necessary? Yes, because our government has failed to expeditiously act and because putting jobless, bankrupt families onto the street makes no economic or moral sense whatsoever!

[sandiegodreamer]

ACORN may be tainted, but somebody has to take up the cause for struggling homeowners. These banks full of corporate thieves have begged for and gotten our tax dollars in the form of a bailout. Many homeowners whose taxes are helping line these fat cats' pockets now are in need of assistance. So what do these banks do? After using the tax money to buy $34,000 toilets, $50,000,0000 jets and millions on their 'golden parachutes", they kick the struggling homeowners­/taxpayers to the curb! I say enough is enough. I'm about ready for a little civil disobedience now.

[Luvial]

ACORN is not tainted. Stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Hundreds of billions in bailout funds to banks and mortgage rates have hardly fallen. The sub-prime fiasco is over a year and a half old, and nothing has been done to stop foreclosures. We need national bank to finance/refinance 4% mortgages for families and 5% savings accounts. Enough of tinkle down economics. ACORN tainted by Republicans? The nuts in the Republican Party are tainted not ACORN. Time for America to awaken and work in their own interest. 70% of the US economy is based on consumer spending. We ARE the economy, we need to get our share.

[VikingQuest]

"ACORN is not tainted"

I would say when your employees are getting indicted by grand jurys . . . you are tainted.

[RoseMerry]

I will not stand for ANYONE to dis ACORN in my presence! ACORN are great people and great Americans.­..who are ALL FIRED UP!!!

[ohioan73]

I see where Acorn is going with this and I applaud their efforts. Many of the loans made under sub-prime lenders were criminal. Many people were steered to those loans even when the buyer qualified for a prime loan because the big banks redlined several poor communities and refused to make any but fraudulent and egregiously inflated with fees (read KICK BACKS) sub-prime loans in those areas. Some of those people were seniors who had their mortgage paid off for more than 30 years and along comes the loansharks that steer them toward a $300,000 2nd mortgage that they dont realize they signed for until they see the final paper work when it comes in the mail. They owe their entire house back and then some all because they wanted a $5,000 loan to remodel a kitchen. Now they cant even leave that house to their children because it belongs to a bank. A 30 year 2nd mortgage signed over to an 80 year old? Many of those stories are tragic and somebody has to do something. There are many other organizations working on behalf of individuals who were ripped off but with different strategies. Acorn is just one.

[Mdazes]

ACORN this organization took a beating from the Republicans. Fairly or unfairly ACORN image has been tainted. ACORN did a poor job of defending the organization. No matter how much good ACORN does it will always come under attack.

[VikingQuest]

I'm sorry but there is no reasno ACORN should continue to get public funding.

[RedKnuckles]

Glad you're sorry....n­ow I will ignore you.

[bluewater7777]

Agree.

[arcticterrier]

These are all big boys and girls who signed a contract. If they didn't read it first, they were foolish. To now cry foul because you are expected to live up to the terms you agreed to is childish. It appears from this article that ACORN is quite possibly complicit in encouraging criminal activity.

[Rogan]

I take it you're one of the moral-less reprobates who profits from this mess?

[bluewater7777]

Agree. People who can sign the contract are adult, at least with High school graduation, right ? If you don't know the term, you should not sign the contract.

[degenerate1991]

What? If you don't pay your mortgage the bank takes their house back? Blasphemy.

[1liberalconspirator]

It's a little more complicated than that as a lot of fraud and misrepresentation occurred in the mortgage underwriting business. Actually, it's a lot more complicated than you would believe if you did not work in the industry. Don't take my word for it google it and find out.

On the other hand a lot of people lied on their mortgage application. But the system was set up to not fact check and mortgage brokers helped some people to rig the system to qualify just to get a commission.

You have to go on a case by case basis...No simple solutions here.

[grandpacory]

squatting, solidarity, law breaking. careful, with this kind of support and action, talking heads might start calling ACORN the big, nasty A word.

[Cinnamonape]

Wait, a legal tenant who pays their rent is threatened with eviction..­.and that's considered law-breaking? And it sure seems to me that ACORN is working to get the laws changed...­through the State legislatures or Federal government­...that's not "Anarchism".

Or a tenant who makes repairs to their domicile because the landlord fails to make repairs is evicted for withholding the share of rent that the repair cost? In this case the landlord violated the law...not the tenant. Yet due to foreclosure the landlord can evict?

And "eviction" goes on the tenants rental history...­making it nearly impossible to find a new residence.­..especial­ly if hundreds of apartment buildings are shuttered due to foreclosure.

In amny or most cases the tenants are willing to pay the new "owner" rent...but that new owner of the foreclosed property is completely unaware they own an apartment complex or incapable of managing one. What if a Bank in Communist China suddenly owns a "toxic asset" in Gary, Indiana? It's a little difficult for them to come in on the weekend to fix a leak.

Preferably the laws should be changed...­but I suspect that a little civil disobedience when laws are unable to deal with a housing crisis the scale of which has never been seen in this country.

[grandpacory]

satire .exe

[brodon]

This group is so corrupt, they need to be established as a Government agency.

And to think, the "Stimulus" package has/jhad 400 million dollars built in for these rascals.

[Mdazes]

"400 million dollars built in for these rascals." That is not true. I heard about that also, but on CNN it was cleared up, after someone put out this false information. Just one more way of fighting against the Stimulus Bill.

[cfbarnhart]

You don't need my phone number for me to sign a petition. so I didn't sign. That's a bit invasive.

[overd0g1]

The solution is to foreclose. That is what everyone agreed to in writing when they bought their home. There, that was easy, wasn't it?

[1liberalconspirator]

Foreclosure is more complicated than you think it increases the reserve that a bank has to hold which results in fewer loans and less money in the system...s­o the system slows since business can't borrow so they lay off...so more foreclosures happen...

I am even oversimplifying it here and it is misleading as a result. The problem is that no simple solution exists no matter what Rush may tell people.

[Luvial]

And the solution for businesses is to go bankrupt, that is what stockholders signed up for when they bought their stock. Ooops. Nevermind, businesses get bailouts, mortgages and families go out on the street.