http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/12/06/occupy-sit-in-at-vets-house-provides-window-into-new-protest-ta/?ncid=webmail18

 

This links to a story about a Marine vet in Minnesote who was evicted form his home after a series of bad turns.

 

Are there really two sides to the story? Is the vet a deadbeat of are the banks the scum of the earth?

 

Thel sense I get from this community is that the vet will be considered to be a deadbeat.

It's B of A so their reputation as scum predceeds them. Why someone who suffered 5 heart attacks and injuries like this man did would be considered a deadbeat is just plain foolish. I'm sure he sat at home and planned each one of the heart attacks.

It is a hard call. He took a risk at borrowing the 250,000 a few years ago. To start a construction buisness. To be objective he borrowed the money and couldn't pay it back. He should honor his word and move out.

 Now if the bank raised the interest rate and made his payment go higher than he could afford. Then the bank would be a dirtbag and he should stay until they drag him out. I did not see an indication of that in the article, however I could have missed it.

 

 He is not a dirtbag, but I think after a few weeks of tents in his yard and campers using his bathroom he will want to move out.

 

 My grandpa used to say "Company is like fish. After three days it starts to stink."

 

 

Does the reporter tell the full story? As I understand mortgages, up the point that the borrower owns a substantial equity in the property, lenders require some type of insurance. I don't know about Veteran's Administration Loans. I think the VA backs the loan in those cases where the vet becomes unable to pay the loan.

A coverage that I think we owe our vets.

Was this a VA loan?

Should a borrower have recourse other than the "occupy" protests? We have at least one incidence of foreclosure in our neighborhood that strikes me as a greedy bank.

Professor Robert Reich of Berkely seems to be leading the outcry for reform of bank lending practice.

The one thing I think Reich has going against him is the Berserkely label pasted on him by those that claim money is always correct.

Vet Facing Eviction Inspires Occupy Movement's New EffortBy Teke Wiggin | Posted Dec 6th 2011 9:00AM 41 Comments ∨ 104937

Forced out of work by five heart attacks and three rotator cuff injuries, Bobby Hull, a marine who served during the Vietnam era, had struggled to make his mortgage payments, and until recently, was resigned to losing the Minneapolis home that has stayed in his family for 43 years.

But the efforts of the city's Occupy movement, Occupy Minneapolis, and local like-minded advocacy groups has infused the construction worker with new hope.

"It's been a big relief," says the former Marine, who since retiring from the military has made his living as a mason and plasterer. "I'm not trying to have false hope. But I'm hopeful."

Starting today, Occupy Minneapolis, in coordination with a local housing advocacy group, expects to launch an extended sit-in to protest Hull's eviction. They plan to pitch tents, erect protest banners and transform the home into a "community hub," as they await his planned February eviction, which they've vowed to resist.

The protest coincides with a nationwide anti-foreclosure offensive scheduled to kick off tomorrow. Signaling a shift in tactics amid the removal of protesters from public spaces around the country, Occupy movements in many cities are planning similar sit-ins at the homes of beleaguered homeowners. In fact, today marks the official launch of Occupy Our Homes, an anti-foreclosure campaign, which according to Salon, is expected to happen in 20 cities.

The protest effort at Hull's home offers a window into the mechanics of this new tactic, which often appear to grow out of cross-pollination between seasoned advocacy groups and Occupy protestors.

"We've developed a model that I hope will become a national model for how this works," says Anthony Newby, an organizer for Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, which facilitated the sit-in. "We want to identify homeowners who are going to foreclosure, and then we just leverage the momentum of Occupy to create community support for people in crisis."

Nick Espinosa, an organizer for Occupy Minneapolis, along with his fellow protesters, originally learned of Hull's situation after canvassing with Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, according to the housing group's executive director, Steve Fletcher. At Espinosa's request, Fletcher gave the protesters a crash course on canvassing so that they could reach out to foreclosure victims in a professional manner. After the training, Occupy protesters and members of the housing group used a list of locals facing eviction -- compiled by Neighborhoods Organizing for Change -- to track down struggling homeowners that were open to their support. That's how they found Hull.

Espinosa said Neighborhoods Organizing for Change has been an "incredible help in helping us to learn more what [protest of foreclosures] "looks like."

Hull is the third homeowner whose house Occupy Minneapolis will try to save. The protesters are already camped out at the residence of Monique White, who also faces eviction. According to Fletcher, they learned of White's case from the Northside Community Reinvestment Coalition. The coordination is another instance of an advocacy group providing logistical support to help Occupy resist the evictions of homeowners who have been foreclosed on.

Previously, Occupy Minneapolis had staged a short-lived occupation at another foreclosed home; it ended in arrests. In that case, Occupy protesters themselves discovered the homeowner, says Fletcher, after she showed up in Hennepin County Government Plaza to share her story. Regardless of what have inspired the three protests, Neighborhoods Organizing for Change members have participated with Occupy Minneapolis in all of them.

Like many of its sister movements around the country, Occupy Minneapolis has struggled to maintain its public presence. According to The Twin Cities Daily Planet, police seized tents from the plaza on Nov. 29, "effectively evicting" their public occupation.

Occupying foreclosed homes appears to be one of the most effective ways for the movement to adapt in the face of such crackdowns, says Espinosa.

"It does seem like this is the direction of where a lot of this energy is going," Espinosa says. "It's a way to bring the fight from Wall Street onto Main Street ... to really get neighborhoods in a tangible way where they see what we have to offer them."

For the extended sit-in at Hull's home, protesters will set up tents and transform the house into a "community hub," where protesters will hold meetings and enlist the support of neighbors.

Espinosa says protesters will encourage community members to sign a pledge to resist Hull's eviction, support a moratorium on foreclosures and defy their own possible evictions.

Hull, who served as a demolitions instructor during the Vietnam era, has lived in his home since 1968, when his mother purchased it. The title later was transferred to him, and he eventually paid off the loan.

But about four years ago he took out a $250,000 loan on the home to start a contracting business. Shortly thereafter, he suffered five heart attacks and three rotator cuff injuries. With no steady paycheck, he tried for two years to negotiate a loan modification with Bank of America.

He had hoped the bank would postpone the August-scheduled sheriff sale of his home, pending its review of his application for the Home Affordable Modification Program, a relief program launched by the Obama administration that has fallen far short of its goals.

But that didn't happen, and in an event that speaks volumes about the housing bust's devastating impact on real estate values around the country, Hull's lifelong home sold at auction for a mere $83,700, nearly $200,000 less than what he owed on it.

"I should be able to be back to work by February," he said. "If they had just postponed it, I could be back to work."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article described Hull as a Vietnam veteran. He did not serve in Vietnam but as a demolitions instructor during the Vietnam era.



See also:
Man Sells Sister's Home as She Was Cloistered in Nunnery
Family Wrongly Booted From Home Return to Wreckage
Deputies Refuse to Evict 103-Year-Old From Home
Occupy Wall Street: Housing Stories From the Front Lines


Gallery: 10 Cities Getting Slammed by Foreclosures



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Filed under: News
Tags: Bobby Hull, Foreclosure sit-ins, Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, Northside Community Reinvestment Coalition, Occupy foreclosure protests, Occupy foreclosure sit-ins, Occupy Minneapolis, Occupy Minneapolis foreclosures

We'll never know all the facts, but on the surface:
If someone loans you money and you sign agreeing to pay it back or you forfeit collateral, then those are the terms. How many of us would loan money and not expect someone to pay it back? Would people have the same opinion if he borrowed the money from a friend, family member, or your own retirement account with the same terms for payback? What about disability insurance he must not have purchased? Just being a Vet does not give you the right to default.
It goes along with another question: Someone works their whole life and fails to prepare for retirement. At 80, he is unable to maintain his lifestyle (out of funds). Who's problem is it that he failed to prepare for his retirement? He had somewhere around 60 years to get ready!
Nope, not sure I have the correct answer either.

If the bank did something underhand and/or illegal then they should be penalized and/or someone jailed. Of course, this might include people like Freddie and Fannie leaders that decided to loan money to those who could never pay it back.

2Grands, thanks for the reply.

These foreclosures may be a situation where nullification is called for. Nullification is a term describing the action of a jury.

The judge instructs the jurors to find according to the evidence presented and the law wiich is explained in court and to ignore everything else. The jury may not agree with the law.

The jury "nullifies" the law by ignoring the judge and making their finding on what they consider to be correct. Not on what has been instructed.

In trials by judges, as in Appeal Courts, judges themselves pracice nullification. It is called legislating from the bench.

Kervorkian, Elsberg, OJ are recent popular examples of nullification.

The issue here goes back to Jefferson and Hamilton. No central government but a central bank leads to Whiskey Rebellions, NASCAR racing, TARPS and foreclosures. A body of people, the banks are granted monopoly powers with little or no oversight to rein in the inevitable misuse of power.

Similar foreclosures happened in the United States in the twenties and thirties. Loans were ballon at the time. A hiccup in the weather meant that farmers could not meet the note. The upshot was the formation of Granges and other self financing groups. The idea was to keep the farmers down on the farm. A farm is useless unless there are knowlegeable people to work it.

A city or county is useless unless there are knowledgeable people to run it.

There is an increase in self financing underway even as we speak.

FWIW, I would not have made the loans. I bank with a credit union that listens to their depositors much more closely than the banks which are owned by shareholders.

Bottom line? I think the answer will be a consensus developed from conversations like this.

I guess my concern is the automatic assumption by the lenders and other that the man is a deadbeat because he has trouble paying backhis loan. If he just skipped oout on it that would be one thing, but he had a valid reason for not paying it (yes he agreed to but it is silly to punish someone for becoming ill. He didn't plan the health problems so considerations should be made to work and accomodate him. Having worked in the past for lenders, I can guarantee most do not want to work with anyone falling behind. It's easier to just take the loss, get what you can and write the rest off. It's a matter of expiedency and if it weren't for some of the law regulating forclosure, they would jump directly to it, and many still do but have the legal staff to cover their tracks. It's a very dishonest industry, in my expierence.