This is part of my What Happened to ACORN series.
Last week a group called New York Communities for Change (NYCC) joined with New York City Comptroller John Liu and seven of New York's largest unions to demand that Wall Street's biggest banks reform their loan modification policies so families facing foreclosure will not lose their homes. If other groups follow that lead, we might make a big dent in the foreclosure crisis.
NYCC and its sister organization, Mutual Housing Association of New York, have been working with foreclosure victims neighborhoods like St. Albans in Queens, or Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn not far from Wall Street, where homeowners have been forced to make impossible choices: keep up their skyrocketing mortgage payments or provide their families with food and clothing.
Members of the group are angry at banks, who have been painfully slow to offer loan modifications, or simply refuse to lift a finger to help vulnerable families and neighborhoods to avoid foreclosure. Some banks often screw homeowners by sending numerous requests for already-submitted documents, and then foreclose on the hapless homeowner because the banks falsely claim that they never got those same documents!
The federal government's attempt to solve the foreclosure crisis has failed. In 2009, 50,000 foreclosures swept New York state, with nearly half in NYC. Across the country the crisis is getting worse, not better. Katrina vanden Heuvel on July 15, in the Nation, reported that New York City foreclosures rose 16 percent in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the same period last year, with "...over 265,000 mortgages -- 13 percent of the mortgages in New York State-are now past due or in the foreclosure process. Meanwhile, banks have made less than 12,000 permanent modifications in the state since May 2009."
After several community meetings it became clear that many NYCC and union members need their mortgages modified because they are underwater or delinquent. The community and labor groups put together an action plan with Comptroller Liu, SEIU 32BJ & 1199, United Federation of Teachers, TWU, DC37, RWDSU, and the NY Hotel and Motel Trades Council.
To start they will send a letter to Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, criticizing them for dragging their feet and demanding they do "everything possible" to avert foreclosures, including mortgage modifications.
At a July 13th, press conference, Michael Mulgrew, President, UFT, said he has brought the issue to the pension funds and they will consider all options. John Samuelsen, President, TWU Local 100 said that "since he was on the board of the city pension fund, he would ask that the bank's response be one of the ways in which they evaluate where they put their money." NYCC member, Jean-Andre Sassine, caught in the mortgage bind, said, "if the big banks won't listen to homeowners, we thought that they should hear from some of their biggest investors -- the city, the unions and their pension funds."
If the banks fail to act, all parties involved could move their pension funds and bank deposits to other institutions. That is why the groups call their plan the Move Your Money campaign.
They claim it will not only modify foreclosures and save homes, it will hold big banks accountable to the community where they take deposits and profit from government supported loans. After foreclosures, neighbors who remain behind suffer from declining property values, and local and state revenues plummet, contributing to a stagnant economy and high unemployment. The coalition is demanding answers by September 1.
Thus far the Obama administration plan -- which relies on a voluntary mortgage modification program -- has not worked, forcing New Yorkers to take matters into their own hands.
The groups put Wall Street on notice that unless the banks increase the number of modifications, including principal write-downs, expedite the modification process and stop foreclosure proceedings while applications are being reviewed, the group will increase the pressure. "This is just the first step in a campaign to win loan modifications that stop preventable foreclosures. We're saying it loud and clear - if the banks won't listen, it's time to move our money," Jon Kest, NYCC's executive director.
What happened to ACORN?
It is a rare showing of both money and people power, with the unions representing over 500,000 working families. NYCC is a coalition of low- and moderate-income working families fighting for social and economic justice throughout New York State and includes some of the leaders and organizers from the now defunct ACORN. The group also uses many of the same tactics and strategies. NYCC's members and leaders hope the action taken by New York City's Comptroller and labor leaders will lead to a dramatic shift in how the banks deal with borrowers.
Civic leaders across the country should follow the coalition's lead. Either big banks become part of the solution or the rest of us will have to Move the Money.
You can buy a copy of John Atlas's new book about ACORN, which tells the whole Acorn story at Amazon or Vanderbilt University Press or in most local book stores.
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Shakesville: Today in Not <b>News</b>: The Afghanistan War Blows
The biggest news about this leak should be that the horror the documents reveal isn't actually news. Not to anyone who's been paying attention to the war we're totally not supposed to be paying attention to. ...
App review: BBC <b>News</b> on iPad & iPhone | Econsultancy
Despite concerns expressed by commercial rivals, the BBC's first iPhone and iPad apps were released last week, with BBC News the first release.
iPhone 4 hitting 17 more countries on Friday | Apple - CNET <b>News</b>
The newest flavor of Apple's smartphone will arrive in additional markets July 30, including Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, and Singapore--but not South Korea. Read this blog post by Lance Whitney on Apple.
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Shakesville: Today in Not <b>News</b>: The Afghanistan War Blows
The biggest news about this leak should be that the horror the documents reveal isn't actually news. Not to anyone who's been paying attention to the war we're totally not supposed to be paying attention to. ...
App review: BBC <b>News</b> on iPad & iPhone | Econsultancy
Despite concerns expressed by commercial rivals, the BBC's first iPhone and iPad apps were released last week, with BBC News the first release.
iPhone 4 hitting 17 more countries on Friday | Apple - CNET <b>News</b>
The newest flavor of Apple's smartphone will arrive in additional markets July 30, including Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, and Singapore--but not South Korea. Read this blog post by Lance Whitney on Apple.
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Note: the video is not showing on iPad.
Any chance of an alternative format (I assume the one on the page is in Flash)?
Thx.
Posted by readerOfTeaLeaves | July 9th, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Parents, Education, & Symptoms
Parents have got to get in the game, if they want to continue participating. The education system is an abject failure. It has to be replaced, and the tool is there to do it. Parents do not require permission from government or multinational corporations. Uncontrolled multinational growth is a function of community failure.
Of course the multinationals want nations, states, communities and individuals competing against each other; their controlling interests naturally breed on control. Of course they pay the economists to argue that competition is the be all and end all. On the one hand parents are competing in a system designed to ensure they lose, and on the other they attempt to give their own children a comparative advantage over other kids, locking failure in for the community.
The best thing parents can do is build strong, independent communities, so all kids can be successful. In net, parents are isolating their children into a competition with the multinationals, while their own governments are offering them a near-term profit to dissolve their families, paid for by the multinationals, which the governments are competing for, by giving them your money, your property, your taxes, and your ideas. And what makes it all work is parents competing to get in their cars and go shopping to feed the multinationals.
Economies are self-correcting. Multinationals cannot change their behavior. They destroy their own food chain, new families, by economic design. The multinationals are writing the laws, to which parents are subjected, and to which the multinationals are exempted, in a political system paid for by the parents. If the community is simply an extension of the State, the system may only liquidate. A constitution is designed to protect the State from itself. Only a community can protect liberty, and liberty is the path to the future.
Much of America is a victim of its own success. The multinationals have grown alongside strong communities. GDP measures consumption cost. It in no way measures investment or profit. The multinationals are simply a looking glass, and what parents see is what they want to see. Politicians tell parents whatever they want to hear, largely that the problem is government or corporate.
Yes. The more you shop, the longer it will take for the machine to target you, but the machine has caught up to everyone now. An American flag does not make a multinational American. Because some communities choose to be fat, dumb, and lazy in no way limits other communities. Liberty is not subject to majority vote. If a majority jumps off a bridge, will you?
Anything is fixable, if the right people are in charge. In this case, the parents have to take charge of the economy. There is always a reservoir of goodwill for children somewhere. When you have ruled everything else out, what remains, no matter how improbable, is the solution. Not so ironically, Barack Obama was a community organizer.
So long as those cleats hold onto the bank, and you have a good strong rope of small businesses, we’ll pick that $500T load.
Right now, your problem is RICO organization of multinationals through every level of government to preempt participation by small family businesses, to backfill the economy.
Posted by kevinearick | July 10th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
@readerOfTeaLeaves Unfortunately the video we embedded is from GRIT’s site, and they put it up in flash, so there’s not much we can do. Sorry I can’t be of more help!
Posted by Bryce | July 12th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Thanks Bryce. I came back and viewed it on a ‘not-an-iPad’, but appreciate your explanation.
Posted by readerOfTeaLeaves | July 12th, 2010 at 5:41 pm