Depending on whom you ask, the housing crisis is over, still going on, or entering a new and far more sinister phase.
Regardless of what happens to the housing market in the near future, we Latinos are doing our part to bolster this crucial component of the U.S. economy. In fact, Hispanics "are thriving during a record low housing market. In the past decade Latino homeownership has risen 2%."
With hope, none of these new homeowners will find themselves dragged into the vortex of financial and emotional turmoil that swirled around Migdia Chinea, a filmmaker. Her story illustrates the extremes to which banks will go to hijack someone's home, and it serves as a cautionary tale for all those Latinos who think their houses are safe.
Now, Chinea is not one of those much-maligned users of subprime mortgages who bought "too much house" in the last decade. She has lived in her California home for thirty years, and she has never missed or been late with the payments.
So how did she end up accumulating a pile of letters from Bank of America that threatened her with foreclosure?
It started a few years ago, with a simple phone call.
"I was going back to school," Chinea said. "So I called Countrywide to see if it was worthwhile to refinance my house."
As we all know, with the benefit of hindsight, Countrywide was the juggernaut at the forefront of the housing collapse. Soon after Chinea spoke to the bank's representatives, Countrywide was sold off to Bank of America, and Chinea was bounced to one person after another, all of whom told her that, with her stellar credit, refinancing would be no problem.
But Chinea didn't like how things were going, so she dropped the matter. She thought nothing more of the topic until a year later, when she received a mysterious letter from BofA.
"The letter said I should be making lower payments on my mortgage," Chinea says. "I wrote them back saying I had never signed anything or enrolled in any program to lower my payments. So I just kept paying my full mortgage."
But unknown to Chinea, her payments were going into an escrow account. That meant nothing was going toward her mortgage. Soon, she was being assessed late fees for falling behind on her mortgage, even though she had been paying it in full all along.
"I talked to twenty people, but nothing changed," Chinea says. "I wrote over one hundred letters, to everybody from the bank's customer service to Timothy Geithner. All I ever got back was form letters."
And soon those form letters took an ominous turn. BofA threatened Chinea with foreclosure. Her credit plummeted, and she started crying daily over the possibility that the bank would seize her home. In a truly Kafkaesque twist, she could not even find out why her home had been targeted or what she had supposedly done wrong.
As it turned out, the bank had taken Chinea's request for information about refinancing and enrolled her -- without her knowledge or permission, she says -- in the Home Affordable Modification Program. The program is designed to help homeowners "avoid foreclosure by modifying loans to a level that is affordable for borrowers."
Through a dizzying series of bureaucratic screw-ups and bizarre assumptions, Chinea was lumped in with delinquent homeowners. As a result, BofA came after her house.
"HAMP isn't just a failure," Chinea says. "It's a fraud. I really think Bank of America has used this program to capture people's homes."
Once Chinea found out what was going on, she threatened a lawsuit. BofA finally backed off at that point, sending a letter stating that her account "was no longer impounded" and that her house was not in danger of foreclosure.
This was the full extent of the bank's apology.
"I went through two years of hell for nothing," Chinea says.
She notes that she is out a significant amount of money for imaginary fees and penalties, and her credit score is still lower than it was before she made that life-changing phone call.
However, her house is safe, apparently. And she has channeled the rage at the way BofA treated her into her short film anonymous (street meat), which has played numerous festivals. She says the film is more of a metaphor for her situation than an overt statement.
When she does talk directly about what happened to her, however, "Somebody always says, 'That's what you get for trying to game the system.' But I didn't know there was a system to game," Chinea says. "I never asked for any of this."
She wonders how many people have similar stories, and she believes the banks are running roughshod over homeowners with the tacit approval of the government. Needless to say, her opinion of the state of America has grown pessimistic lately.
"Something has happened the last few years," Chinea says. "Nobody really cares about other people anymore."
I am unfortunately in a position to see a lot of the discrepancies.
ex.I bought a house myself HSBC mortgage 2002.Bought # 76.Received a deed on # 67.Paid mortgage etc on that loan for eight years. At that time.I visited the county clerk in Riverhead N.Y. Where I found that when I closed on my house in May 2002.There was a mortgage taken out on my real house # 76.Not by me..by the seller.Who did not know either.I got the dummy deed on 67.Now where were my payments going for 8 years.Why did my coupon give the name HSBC PREIMER. Why was nothing coming up on HSBC mortgage website when I put in my account #. I don't get it.Glad I have title insurance on # 76.
November 2008 we approached Countrywide for a loan modification. Never late,
Countrywide sent a letter indicating they had modified our existing loan, reducing the rate to 4% with payments to begin March 2009. The letter further states there was nothing we needed to due further to receive this rate. We began making payments as agreed on times starting March 2009.
The loan was sold to Bank of American May 2009, then to Residential Credit Solutions (RCS) July 2009.
After making payments for 6 months on time at the new rate, RCS returned our August 2009 payment on 8/10/2009 along with a “Notice of Intent to Take Legal Action” dated 8/24/2009 demanding over 19,000 dollars in interest and late fees pointing to the OLD 7.125% interest rate.
We sent RCS the documents substantiating the agreement, but they would not acknowledge them. RCS continued to foreclosure.
After spending over 33,000 in attorney fees, which are “non recoverable” in California, I finally ran out of money and ended up going Pro Per. I wrote my own complaint, summons, Ex Parte Application for TRO, Order to Show Cause, and Proposed Order submitting more than 300 pages of evidence of never being late. The bank’s attorney showed up to the hearing; it was a sweet victory to hear the judge sternly reprimand the banks actions and Grant the Enjoinment stopping the foreclosure until the case can be heard!
Doug Kelley