EDITOR’S NOTE: ATTENTION ALL LAWYERS: SOMEBODY GET IN THERE AND HELP HER!!
MIRA MESA, Calif. — A Mira Mesa woman who chained herself to her home and broke into the home after being evicted is preparing to stand trial.Last year, June Reyno chained herself to her front porch after being told her Mira Mesa home was being foreclosed.”It’s the most undignifying, humiliating feeling there is,” said Reyno in a previous interview.
The chains did not work, and Reyno and her husband were evicted this past March.However, an eviction did not keep Reyno away.Reyno broke into her old home, and that led to misdemeanor charges of trying to repossess the home and trespassing.Deputy City Attorney Morgan Hezlep said, “It’s actually from her being, entering back into the property after she was lawfully removed.”On Friday, a jury was selected for her trial that is set to begin Monday.If convicted Reyno could serve a year in jail and face a $2,000 fine.”If they think I’m performing some criminal act here in defending my home, oh well,” said Reyno.While June Reyno isn’t chained to her porch anymore, she isn’t far.Reyno is staying right next door at her neighbor’s house and she’s doing her best to scare off potential buyers.Reyno hung a letter in a tree outside of the home that says the home is not for sale. It also threatens a criminal lawsuit against anyone who dares to buy it.Reyno’s attorney did not allow her to talk to 10News on Friday, but off-camera she said she is still fighting for her house and does not want anyone to buy it in the meantime.When asked if that causes any concern, Hezlep said, “It has nothing to do with the case at hand.”The County Recorder said the home has been sold, which means Reyno may be out of her home and could soon be in jail.”I’m not the trespasser here and I’m not the lawbreaker,” said Reyno.
Filed under: CDO, CORRUPTION, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, securities fraud, Servicer | Tagged: borrower, disclosure, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, fraud, Lender Liability, Mortgage, predatory lending, rescission, securitization, trustee |
[…] JUNE REYNO TURNS UP THE HEAT IN FIGHT TO SAVE HOME …Jun 15, 2009 … If June reyno goes to jail then there is no justice I admire this lady. Sara, on June 21, … MARIO KENNY, on June 21, 2009 at 7:47 am said: Sara, … […]
If June reyno goes to jail then there is no justice I admire this lady
Mario, the email is one the way.
Happy Father’s Day to everyone!
Sara
Sara,
Please contact me asap malibubooks@gmail.com urgent about June
june,
i salute you for that courage you have, keep on fighting no matter what. who are the lenders? i remember watching you on the news. few people would dare to challenge the lenders or foreclosing company because of lack of knowledge how to fight them. i think it is best for you to fight it in civil court hire a good lawyer that understand your case. lawyers who are passionate in pursuing this kind of fraud. we are all victims of fraud. livinglies help me understand how all the securitization mortgage and lies affected all of us. i research all about securitization trust and mortgage-backed certificate and they ( lenders should follow some procedures when they sold the mortgage certificates to other investors) it must be recorded in the county court where the property is located. they should record the assignment of mortgage/deed of trust in the county clerk of court. that deed of assignment tells you who the real note holder in due course aside from that document, remember the securitization process creates the trust and a trustee so whoever create the trust and the trustee is the owner of the note,, and the trustee appoint a loan servicer of the trust to collect payment from the mortgage certificate. now but when the trustee sold the certificate to private investor what happen then/ trustee would record the pooling and servicing agreement in the county record aside from recording the assignment of mortgage/deed of trust. the Pooling and Servicing agreement it says this is an example below:
bank of united state, as trustee under the Pooling and Servicing Agreement dated january 1, 0000, for ABC ASSET ACCEPTANCE CORP., XYZ LOAN SERVICING FOR THE ASSET-BACKED- CERTIFICATE, SERIES 0000-AR1, WITHOUT RECOURSE.
IT MEANS THAT THE POOLING AGREEMENT ITSELF THAT SAYS WITHOUT RECOURSE MEANS BUYER OR INVESTOR BEWARE, IF THE MORTGAGE CERTIFICATE SECURED BY THE DEED OF TRUST IS IN DE FAULT, INVESTOR WOULD NOT HAVE THE LEGAL RECOURSE AGAINST THE SECURITIZER WHO SOLD THEM THE BONDS. MEANING THE TRUSTEE HAS THE POWER TO TAKE AWAY YOUR HOME IF YOU DEFAULTED . THAT IS THE REASONS WHY THEY CANNOT SHOW US (THE ACTUAL HOLDER OF THE NOTES, BY DEFAULTING OUR MORTGAGE IS A LOST FOR THE INVESTOR BUT A BIG FROFIT FOR THE TRUST/ LENDERS WHO WILL BE THE WINNER OF ALL. I REST MY CASE.
OMG!!! She gave a 2 hour closing speech (yawn).
And at what cost did this cost the county? Talk about a waste of the taxpayers money!!!
June: I am so sorry you were made into an escape goat in this silly case. And they are actually going to waste more money on some vandalism charge for a broken window?
Ummm…does the county go after the street kids who bust up mailboxes for fun with such zeal and zest? Or how about the little old lady that jay-walks?
Maybe the prosecutor or even the judge will be the next victim of mortgage fraud and illegal foreclosure! It could happen… After all, karma does happen and sometimes it’s a real bitch!!!!
Well girl, this whole ordeal is so wrong and we are all going to fight for you! My letters are going to be written and sent out to everyone I can think of.
Sara
Dear Mario & Friends:
Please pass this information on to anyone that may have an interest.
The jurors began deliberation on Thursday the 18th and rendered a guilty verdict on 2 counts: trespassing and re-entry. However, they were deadlocked on the vandalism charge which the Prosecutor slipped it in under the Judge’s nose as a chargeable offense unbennounced to us and therefore unlikely we could make defense to the charge on such short notice.
The judge declared a mis-trial on the charge of vandalism because the jurors remained deadlocked on the vandalism charge so I am back in courtroom again with 12 different people on July 14, 2009.
The judge exonerated my bail but he gave orders (after hearing the tattle tailing report from the Prosecutor) that I have been scaring the buyers and realtors away from the house and posting signs to deter them because “I am in denial” since I no longer own the house. And that “I need to be taught a lesson to never do this again”. The Prosecutor used that term being “in denial” many times in her closing statements to jurors. She also said that she intends to prove that I am a vexatious litigant. I think she is confusing this with my exercise (actually everyone’s) constitutional rights to due process under law if they believe they’ve been wronged somehow. I’m the debtor who sought protection from the bankrtupcy courts to save our home from foreclosure and the lender is the creditor who must validate or prove the debt.
The prosecutor gave a 2 hour closing statement while my attorney the public defender closing statement lasted less than 10 minutes. It was our home of 20 years and I believed we were protected under the law and had a legal right to remain as occupants.
Obviously the lender/bank/whoever they may be ?? wants to sell our home to make more profit after they cheated their way through the court system in stealing our home. Unfortunately, before judges who are either crooked or are ignorant of property laws.
It’s simple and reasonable to stop anyone from even thinking of buying our home or attempt to place a formal offer to buy the house and believe it is really in the buyer’s best interest to know up front what they are getting into and that title cannot issue when there has been fraudulent conveyance of the property. So what I’m doing is actually protecting and saving time for the future buyer. After all, why move into a house when you know that possibly sometime in the very near future it may not to be legally yours?
Unfortunately Judge Gregory W. Pollack the presiding judge did not see my point of view. He ordered me to take my signs down (that was hanging from a tree on my neighbor’s side) and prohibited me not to step foot on the property within 100 ft. circumference of the house. I am currently living with my neighbor next door whose home measures doorstep to doorstep only about 25 ft. from my front porch to the house! My attorney argued that it would mean that I would have to find some other house to live in to comply with the Judge’s order. Well the Judge seemed to think that would be unreasonable so he gave me some slack and said that as long as I stay off the “public sidewalk in front of our house and not get near our house” and just utilize the street to park my car in and out of my neighbors driveway it would be okay. So be it. However, my concerns are that if any one of my zealous for the cause neighbors who without my knowledge hangs that same sign that’s mine on his front yard or porch; the 100 ft. prohibition would be deemed a violation on my part under the court order. The houses in our cul-de-sac are enjoined and are within the bondaries of the 100 ft. prohibition. Therefore, even though I may not have knowledge of the act; I could be charged personally for the violation according to the Judge.
Many are probably wondering, what were my expectations of the verdict?
To be acquitted of course. But I fully understand why the jurors came to reach the verdict they did. I understand because #1 we presented no evidence, no witnesses. Just me on the stand. #2 we could not prepare defense on the last minute “vandalism” charge #3 The prosecutor and judge to back it up wanted me to answer only by “yes” and “no” responses as I was on the witness stand. And, if I tried to expound on the subject matter on the prosecutor’s line of questions; I was reminded and told by the Judge “Is it yes or no? Nothing more to say. And am I [prosecutor] correct in saying that?” or the prosecutor correct is saying that or this? Any other response from me other than a yes or no response would appear to be that I am being evasive about my answer and looks as if I was trying to hide the truth because I didn’t meet the timing expectations of a credible witness. But I know when I’m being framed and that may not have been in my favor to say more than I really needed to say as I was on the stand.
Also, does not help when my attorney told me beforehand not to go into any great details and to keep my response short and just answer directly to the point from the line of questions from the prosecutor because he would give me the opportunity to answer in more detail when it is his time to cross examine me on the witness stand.
Well, he never did ask me those questions he said he would ask when it was his turn to cross examine so that the jurors can hear from me the whole truth , Half truths are not truths. And, my opportunity reliant on my attorney asking me the questions so I could provide the jurors with greater insight on the subject matter never came about or happen.
So I am certainly not surprised that the jurors would render a guilty verdict. I am not disgruntled at anyone either. All I know is that everyone has been deceived. Everyone has profited. And, everyone must suffer the consequences of a[ny] person’s behavior.
I was constantly reminded by my attorney that this is a criminal charge not a civil matter. I vehemently disagree with that. I believe every court case IS a civil matter. It begins with a complaint from one party against another. After all, we would all be considered guity before trial and that we must prove that we are innocent.
#4 The debacle that occured October 2008 when I protested the eviction by chaining myself to the front porch of my house was because we were lied to again!! after making a good faith effort to work with the lender. After we met their conditional statement that we would be allowed to stay if we could produce a qualifying letter to buy the property. We did. We came through with the qualifying letter but they did not keep their end of the deal. It’s quite apparent that it was never their intention to help us stay in our home. Even though my actions taken by chaining myself to the front porch is not a natural occurrence for people who are homeowners –we should still stand up for what we believe to be right, just, good and proper.
I asked the public defender “Who did I injure here by breaking into a house that I believe I still own and have paid close to $1M over the course of 20 years?” He said: “THE GOVERNMENT. You injured the government.”
Members of Congress and the Senators etc. express the same outrage about all of these wrongful evictions and foreclosures but are still NOT doing much to stop the banks in foreclosing on homeowners. Most of us know why because we’ve been educated about it thanks to Neil and friends on the blog. But we’re still the minority. Reality speaks when 12 jurors render a homeowner fighting wrongful foreclosure (after the Oct 2008 bank bail out) a guilty verdict. At least to me, considering these chain of events that occurred at my trial; it should not be a surprise that the jurors would render a guilty verdict.
900,000+ hits on Neils’ livinglies wordpress blog is not enough. So there is still plenty of work we can do to promote foreclosure prevention education so that 200 Million Americans DAILY are actually hitting Neil’s site to learn how homeowners can save there homes from the banks that are stealing these houses.
Until then, I think people will just continue carrying on with the lie if the truth isn’t somehow revealed from friends on Neil’s blog site. New sites are streaming in trying to reveal what Neil’s has been saying to the public all along. All were wronged. Both the investor and the homeowners duped.
Kind Regards,
June Reyno
858-361-2399
– Show quoted text –
Unanimous on 2 counts. Undecided on 1 count. Latest poll is 8/4.
At 1:45pm all the jurors unanimously said “yes” to the judge when he asked: “How many think they can reach a decision today on the undecided last count?”
All responded with “yes” (to try to reach a unanimous vote on the undecided count before (hopefuly end of day).
–June Reyno
June has been on my mind all day!
Damn, I’m worried!!!
Sara
is there any news yet for june reyno about her hearing today in san diego? please update. thanks
Me too Mario, me too…
Maybe the jury will suprise us. I hope these people see that there is more to the story than what is being presented.
Sara
June could not get a Jury trial for the defense of her home but she got one to put her in Jail for entering her home.
her verdict is today, please pray for her, I ask even though I am not a religious person I will pray for her.
Neil was Right most of these cases are settled out of court
yes Mario… and the next hit song on the charts will be
” I Want To Be a Hitler Too”
Sara
A MESSAGE FROM JUNE
Hello Mario:
Today the jurors were given jury instructions and the attorneys their closing statements.
Today I saw how 2 judges covered for the abusive discretion of 3 Judges in state court and 2 Judges in the bankruptcy court who ruined our lives along with 8 attorneys who sold us down the river because they are either cowards or in bed with the banks who continue to steal people’s homes.
I came to appreciate the meaning of Neil and Brad’s website blog: “livinglies”. The lie which breeds in a human host whose [mis]behavior transmits the lie to another willing host who is similarly if not more narcissistic, greedy and neurotic than the person who loved carrying on with the lie.
I’m planning on identifying the San Diego judges and lawyers inside the[ir] gopher holes to change the way they practice law here in San Diego and how they have shown careless disregard for the foreclosed homeowner who is left defenseless and made poor by their abuses of the people and the legal system.
My best hope is to be acquitted for the alleged crime for vandalism (and they can prove it because the whole world saw me do it on television and that’s plenty proof there); trespassing (because the home I have lived in for 20 years is no longer ours so they say); and re-entry (because I was Required by law to first get their permission).
Silly for us to think differently.
Excuse the sarcasm but I have had enough of the bs from judges and lawyers who have been involved with our case.
So to alleviate the classic boredom ha!! I plan to picket every day in front of the courthouse until the gophers (made fat
from the equity they have stolen by foreclosing on people’s family homes) come out of their expensive palatial holes dugged out by the taxpayers money.
I’ll wish I could say I’m doing better but it’s just been one bad hit after another in dealing with judges and lawyers.
Corruption in the justice system needs serious reforming as much as foreclosures and evictions need to stop all the same.
We expect the jury will reach a verdict tomorrow.
I’ll stay in touch.
–June
The banks will become the most powerful people in this country they will own everything and we will own nothing. We will become slaves in some sort of serfdom.
The wealth of this country are in its people not in the banks or the banking system- The economy will crash because the banks will own all the homes and people will be working for the banks and the IRS and other taxes.
Wealth is not measured by money but by the work of people and the love they have for each other and themselves. This was a huge crime that will end in strife and sorrow, people will come out in the streets fighting and there may be too much trouble to bear. The states will fight back but in the end the people will take the country back. This could take a long time but most of the wealth will end up in the hands of the very few, poverty will become wide spread and in tolerable. Suffering will become a thing of everyday life and pain will be the factor that will cause change but at a very high price.
erlinda
fyi
1 they know who the[ holder in due course] . they know!
there are no lost notes.. S KOP ” its much worse it is a ” Morton’s Fork”
2- they want you in default -they make more $ that way[the servicer] takes all $ that is NOT the monthly payment. death by fee’s!
3-they [servicers] are the very [complicit] instrument [collect $ & property ]
that allowed the scam of the century to rape the U.S. citizens AND they all get paid at both ends of the deal.
which means WE all lose!
Well, it says a hell of a lot when a neighbor invites you, your hubby and your 5 dogs to move in says a lot about a person and their character!!! Apparently her neighbors think a great deal of her!
Friends like that are hard to come by these days!
Libra99: you are very lucky to have June for a friend.
Sara
i always have respect with people who stand up and fight for their rights. i’ve seen june reyno on the news trying to save her home but i felt sorry for her that she indeed lost her house. loan modification is a big lie, lenders and loan servicer will acknowledge your request but will never do to modify your loan based on obama’s plan. the easy way to protect your property is to file bankruptcy and have your loan documents forensic and file an adversary action against the lender, the trustee, the loan servicer. MERS and unknown investor. if all the homeowners who are in default and facing foreclosure will clogged the bankruptcy filing in california?, i think our government will take notice. my opinion why the lenders and loan servicer are not modifying because THEY ARE NOT THE TRUE OWNER OF THE NOTE, THEY CANNOT LOCATE THE HOLDER OF THE NOTE IN DUE COURSE. THEY HAVE NO POWER TO MODIFY OUR LOAN BECAUSE MOST OF THESE SO CALLED LOAN SERVICER IS JUST A COMPANY THAT RECEIVED OUR MORTGAGE PAYMENT. IT IS COMMON SENSE WHY THEY DON’T MODIFY. NO POWER TO DO IT. CAN’T LOCATE THE NOTE HOLDER. THEY WANT TO FORECLOSE BECAUSE THEY WOULD GET THE MONEY FROM THE PROCEEDS AND KEEP IT IF YOU DON’T FIGHT. FIGHTING THEM IS NECESSARY TO KEEP YOUR HOUSE WHATEVER MEANS CHALLENGE THEM IN COURT. REMEMBER, THESE LOAN SERVICER DID NOT PUT ANY PENNY INTO OUR HOUSE AND LET THEM TAKE AWAY OUR AMERICAN DREAMS? WE SHOULD BE VIGILANT, THIS IS WERE WE PUT OUR MONEY AND SAVINGS INTO THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN, WE PAY ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY TO MAINTAIN OUR PROPERTY SUCH AS PROPERTY TAX, HOMEOWNER” INSURANCE, MORTGAGE PAYMENT AND SOME EXPENSES NEEDED TO MAINTAIN THE PROPERTY UNTIL WE BECAME ALL VICTIMS IN MORTGAGE MELTDOWN BY GREED OF WALL ST. I URGE YOU NOT TO BE A VICTIM AGAIN. DON’T BE A QUITTER BECAUSE I AM NOT. FIGHT , FIGHT, AND FIGHT.
I know June personally, and I admire her conviction. Having been evicted from my own house four months ago, I obviously don’t have the courage she does. I fought my own case in court as best I could for as long as I could. In the end, they’d worn me down to nothing. The whole system is corrupt, as June is now finding out.
My house now sits dark and empty … half the windows have been broken out and boarded up, the backyard fence completely torn down in parts, and the lawn and plants long since dead.
The banks are criminals for doing this to all of us, and so is the government for letting them. Fight them both.
Foreclosure Fightback
Foreclosure Fightback
January 22nd, 2009
TheNation.com
By Ben Ehrenreich
“This is a crowd that won’t scatter,” James Steele wrote in the pages of The Nation some seventy-five years ago. Early one morning in July 1933, the police had evicted John Sparanga and his family from a home on Cleveland’s east side. Sparanga had lost his job and fallen behind on mortgage payments. The bank had foreclosed. A grassroots “home defense” organization, which had managed to forestall the eviction on three occasions, put out the call, and 10,000 people–mainly working-class immigrants from Southern and Central Europe–soon gathered, withstanding wave after wave of police tear gas, clubbings and bullets, “vowing not to leave until John Sparanga [was] back in his home.”
“The small home-owners of the United States are organizing,” Steele concluded, “tardily perhaps, but none the less surely.” It wasn’t just homeowners–three months earlier the governor of Iowa had called out the National Guard after farmers stormed a courthouse and threatened to hang the judge if he didn’t stop issuing foreclosures. They left him in a ditch, bruised but alive. By the end of the 1930s, farmers’ and home-owners’ struggles had pushed the legislatures of no fewer than twenty-seven states to pass moratoriums on foreclosures.
The crowds appear to be gathering again–far more quietly this time but hardly tentatively. Community-based movements to halt the flood of foreclosures have been building across the country. They turned out in Cleveland once again in October, when a coalition of grassroots housing groups rallied outside the Cuyahoga County courthouse, calling for a foreclosure freeze and constructing a mock graveyard of Styrofoam headstones bearing the names of local communities decimated by the housing crisis. (They did not, unfortunately, stop the more than 1,000 foreclosure filings in the county the following month.) In Boston the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America began protesting in front of Countrywide Financial offices in October 2007. Within weeks, Countrywide had agreed to work with the group to renegotiate loans. In Philadelphia ACORN and other community organizations helped to pressure the city council to order the county sheriff to halt foreclosure auctions this past March. Philadelphia has since implemented a program mandating “conciliation conferences” between defaulting homeowners and lenders. ACORN organizers say the program has a 78 percent success rate at keeping people in their homes. One activist group in Miami has taken a more direct approach to the crisis, housing homeless families in abandoned bank-owned homes without waiting for government permission.
It’s unlikely, though, that any of these activists will be able to relax soon. Other than calling for a ninety-day freeze on foreclosures–which, given that loan negotiations can take many months to work out, would almost certainly be inadequate–President Obama has been consistently vague about his plans to address the foreclosure crisis. He has indicated his support for a $24 billion program proposed in November by FDIC chair Sheila Bair, which would offer banks incentives to renegotiate loans, aiming to reduce mortgage payments to 31 percent of homeowners’ monthly income. Obama’s economic team has since worked with House Financial Services Committee chair Barney Frank on a bill that would require that between $40 billion and $100 billion of what’s left in the bailout package be spent on an unspecified foreclosure mitigation program. It would be left to Obama’s Treasury Department to design that program. But Frank’s and Bair’s proposed plans are voluntary. Banks that choose not to accept federal assistance won’t have to renegotiate a single loan.
Community organizers, however, aren’t sitting around waiting for banks to come to the table. Nowhere have they had more cause to keep busy than in California, home to a quarter of the 3.2 million foreclosures filed in the country last year. The collapse of the state’s hyperinflated real estate market has left as many as 27 percent of mortgage holders owing more on their homes than the properties are worth; California’s foreclosure rate is more than twice the national average. From San Diego to Stockton, in churches, union halls and community centers, angry homeowners have been organizing to freeze foreclosures and impose a systematic modification of home loans.
The crisis has produced some unlikely activists. Faith Bautista didn’t start out as a rabble-rouser. A small, energetic and stubbornly cheerful woman, she has run a tiny nonprofit called the Mabuhay Alliance since 2004. Until recently, it functioned as an all-purpose minority small-business association. With a staff of six working out of a mini-mall office behind an auto parts store in an industrial section of San Diego, the Mabuhay Alliance served a largely Filipino community (mabuhay translates roughly from Tagalog as viva!) offering, among other services, free income-tax preparation, microloans and counseling for first-time homeowners.
It was through the latter program that Bautista heard the first rumblings of the mortgage meltdown, which would ultimately bring down Wall Street’s most powerful financial firms. Southern California’s development boom hadn’t yet begun to ebb in late 2006, but, Bautista says, “people were already calling us and asking what was going to happen. They were clearly going to default.”
The community Mabuhay serves–about 40 percent Filipino, the remainder Latino, African-American and other Asians–was hit particularly hard. Throughout the housing boom, immigrant and minority borrowers were disproportionately issued high-priced subprime loans, even when they qualified for less expensive, fixed-rate mortgages. One study by the California Reinvestment Coalition found that African-American and Latino borrowers were nearly four times as likely as whites to receive high-cost mortgages. Bautista had an adjustable-rate mortgage on the home she bought in 2004. Her monthly payments soon leapt to $6,000. It took her nine months, she says, and a personal meeting with the CEO of the bank that held her mortgage, to renegotiate the loan. It quickly became obvious to her that fighting the banks on an individual basis would be inadequate to the scale of the crisis–only an organized battle for systematic changes would help keep people in their homes.
In the early months of 2007, as the first of the subprime lenders began to declare bankruptcy, Bautista started contacting major lenders, asking them to stop foreclosures and take part in a “massive loan-modification program”–dropping interest rates, writing down principals and donating executive bonuses to a fund for borrowers at risk of default. If lenders shared responsibility for the crisis, she calculated, homeowners shouldn’t bear the full brunt of the suffering. Not surprisingly, she laughs, “they didn’t want to talk to us.”
That summer, with the help of the Greenlining Institute, a Berkeley-based research and advocacy group that works on racial equality issues, she was able to arrange a meeting with Countrywide co-founder and CEO Angelo Mozilo. At the time, almost one-fourth of Countrywide’s subprime loans were delinquent. The meeting, Bautista says, was fruitless: “Eyes are closed, ears are closed.” Over the next few months, she met three more times with Countrywide management, getting nowhere. “They didn’t want to admit they were doing anything wrong.”
Elected officials appeared equally blind to the extent of the problem. Countrywide’s stock had plummeted, but the influence of the nation’s largest mortgage lender still ran deep. Mozilo’s so-called Friends of Angelo program had cut favorable deals on loans to his highly placed acquaintances, including Christopher Dodd and Kent Conrad, chairs of the Senate banking and budget committees, respectively. And Countrywide, along with other top mortgage lenders and industry associations, spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying Congress and gave millions more in campaign contributions. By mid-October 2007, the government’s only response to the foreclosure crisis had been the creation of the Hope Now alliance, a voluntary mortgage-industry coalition that established a telephone hot line to aid homeowners in altering the terms of their mortgages. But, critics say, the program has done little more than design repayment plans that in many cases actually increased borrowers’ monthly payments. “I call it Hope Not,” quips Bautista.
At the state level, things weren’t much better. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger brokered a nonbinding agreement in which Countrywide and other lenders volunteered to extend the introductory low interest rates on some adjustable-rate mortgages. It only deferred disaster and did nothing for those who were already in default. Meanwhile, new foreclosure records were being broken every month.
The day before Thanksgiving, the Mabuhay Alliance, joined by the Mexican-American Political Alliance, staged a protest in front of Countrywide’s San Diego office. They attempted to hand-deliver a turkey to Mozilo, who, not counting stock options, would be paid $22 million in 2007, down from $42 million in 2006. Once again, the doors were locked. Only about fifty people showed up that day, but the protest got enough press to have a powerful symbolic effect. “No one was willing to take on Mozilo in California,” says Greenlining’s Robert Gnaizda. “He held enormous power. And [Bautista] took him on. She forced the financial industry to pay attention.”
The next week, Bautista and Gnaizda went to Washington and met with Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and FDIC chair Sheila Bair, asking for a freeze on foreclosures and wholesale relief for mortgage holders. Bair was receptive, Bautista says. Bernanke was not. Eight months later, when the FDIC took over IndyMac, Bair immediately suspended foreclosures. “Now they’re willing to do it,” Bautista shrugs. If they’d acted earlier, she says, “all those people who were foreclosed wouldn’t have been foreclosed.”
In December, a few weeks after the Countrywide protest, she and Gnaizda wangled a meeting with California Attorney General Jerry Brown, asking him to sue Countrywide for defrauding borrowers. He wasn’t interested, Bautista says. The following June, a few days before Bank of America bought out the crippled lender, Brown finally filed suit against Mozilo and Countrywide. Gnaizda explains the delay: “Countrywide was not weak in December.”
In the meantime, all the major loan providers in the country have agreed to work with Mabuhay to modify individual loans. This means, Bautista says, that Mabuhay can help about twenty people a week. She is far from satisfied. Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars given to the financial industry, no federal or state government has provided any substantive relief to the people hit the hardest by the mortgage crisis–the ones who are losing their homes. “You gotta start from the bottom and go up,” Bautista says. “If you start at the top, then at the bottom you get crumbs. You get nothing.”
In December Mabuhay sponsored a “foreclosure clinic” at a community college in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Vallejo, which despite its small size–its population is about 112,000–boasted the tenth-highest foreclosure rate in the country at the time. About 150 anxious homeowners showed up, clutching thick folders of financial documents, waiting to speak with mortgage counselors. Their stories were painfully similar: one couple was struggling to pay an interest rate of 16 percent; another was unable to make $4,300 monthly payments and owed $630,000 on a home worth $370,000; another, in their mid-60s, had resigned themselves to losing the home in which they’d lived for twenty-three years and spending their retirement in a motor home.
Standing beside Bautista at the front of the auditorium, Gnaizda did his best to channel the crowd’s frustration into action. “Ten million families are facing foreclosure right now,” he said. “Change is not going to come about because President Obama wants it to. He is not going to act unless you hold his feet to the fire.”
Gnaizda was not alone in that conclusion: other grassroots efforts to stop foreclosures have been sprouting up all over California. In metropolitan Los Angeles and Oakland, groups like ACORN had already established an effective infrastructure to organize low-income homeowners. A list of community demands that came out of a December 2007 ACORN-sponsored meeting at an Oakland senior center became the basis for a July state law requiring banks to warn homeowners thirty days before filing a notice of default. The law is credited with dramatically lowering foreclosure rates in California for two months after it took effect. (Predictably, foreclosure rates resumed their northward climb after that.)
More recently, ACORN has been pushing the adoption of the program the group helped pioneer in Philadelphia, a mandatory mediation process that forces lenders to negotiate with homeowners before filing a judgment of default. “If they can’t figure this out in Sacramento,” says ACORN’s Austin King, “they’re not trying.”
Much of the local organizing on the issue, though, has not come from the usual activist suspects. Circumstances have forced groups that usually practice more staid forms of engagement into the fray, particularly in the former industrial towns just beyond the urban fringe, which have been among those hit hardest by the economic collapse. The antiforeclosure movement in Antioch, about thirty-five miles east of Vallejo, began with ten people forming an organizing committee at a local Catholic church. “We just heard dozens and dozens of stories of people struggling to keep their homes, of people losing their homes. They couldn’t get any of the banks to respond or even speak to them,” says Adam Kruggel, executive director of Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization (CCISCO). Two hundred and fifty people showed up at the group’s first meeting on the issue. “We sort of deputized ourselves,” Kruggel says. “The government wasn’t regulating the banks, so we were going to embarrass them in public.”
The strategy worked. CCISCO protested in front of several Antioch bank branches in May. Lenders soon began returning the group’s phone calls and agreeing to renegotiate their members’ loans. But the Bush administration’s bailout plan generated enough anger that, Kruggel says, “we realized we needed to work on a local and national level. For less than what [the Treasury] gave Wells Fargo, they could create a loan-modification program that could save a million and a half families their homes.” CCISCO began coordinating with similar efforts one county over in Stockton and halfway across the country in Kansas City, and the group sent a lobbying delegation to Washington. It’s asking for a six-month freeze on foreclosures and a cap on mortgage payments at 34 percent of family income. “Any bank that got any bailout money needs to do systematic loan modifications,” Kruggel says. “We’re not going to wait for the Obama administration.”
Craig Robbins, who directs ACORN’s foreclosure campaign, echoes Kruggel’s sentiment: “We’re excited about some of the things Obama has been saying, but there’s got to be tremendous pressure for a real, comprehensive federal solution.” Taking cues from Depression-era antiforeclosure movements, ACORN activists began disrupting foreclosure sales at courthouses across the country in Januaary. “We’re looking to throw a wrench in the foreclosure machinery,” says Robbins, adding that ACORN is planning to organize “rapid defense teams” ready to turn out crowds on short notice to prevent evictions. Until that happens, it might help to remember that the crowd of thousands that came to the Sparanga family’s defense in Cleveland didn’t gather until four years into the Depression. This one has just begun.
Mario is correct. For those who know the background of this case understand June is a victim of mortgage and bankruptcy fraud, and yesterday the jury did hear testimony to that effect; except the lady who fell asleep.
Fortunately, June’s public defender has been perfecting her appeal throughout her trial. He believes June will not be going to jail.
If done properly, the prosecutor’s case could really backfire and bring attention to the real fraud and expose those who defrauded June and the courts.
Has anyone heard anything on how this trial is going? Or how June is holdiing up?
We are praying for her!!!
Angry and not talking about it,
This is my email contact me and I will ask her to allow you to speak to her
malibubooks@gmail.com
mario
do you have a way to contact June?
I totally support June and she is my friend, she is a fighter like me and many others. Her home was foreclosed on illegally in the same manner that all our homes were stolen by the banksters.
Shame on the Banksters who did this all for nothing in the end.
I hope June gets a lot of money from these people and get her home back too. I will do special offerings in her behalf.
June I wish you luck and I hope you whip them all the way to their banks` vaults.