National lending reform campaign kicked off on E. 113th
Leaders of inner-city community organizations from nine cities in six states gathered this morning at Ernest Gardner’s house on East 113th St. to announce their new “Campaign to Save the American Dream” from predatory lending and foreclosures.
Rev. Eugene Barnes of the Central Illnois Organizing Project
outlines NTIC’s “Save the American Dream” platform.
The organizations — from Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Syracuse, Chicago, central Illinois, Wichita and Des Moines — are all affiliated with the National Training and Information Center in Chicago, which has supported neighborhood organizing for bank reinvestment in Cleveland and other cities since the ’70s. The local NTIC partner is Cleveland’s ESOP, which hosted today’s press conference to kick off a campaign for national measures to prevent further foreclosures on family homes, reform the subprime credit market, criminalize abusize mortgage lending practices, and extend Federal Community Reinvestment Act regulation to all mortgage lenders and loan originators.
NTIC held this national press event on East 113th because 44105 is “the highest foreclosure zip code in the country.” (They got an excellent turnout of reporters and cameras.)
Marion Gardner, Ernest’s mother and the 113th St. home’s former owner/occupant, described years of frustrating efforts by her and her son to save it from foreclosure by Countrywide Mortgage. She told the assembly that the experience has cost her $40,000 but has not yet given either her or her son clear title to the house, which is sitting vacant.
Marion Gardner tells her Countrywide story.
Countrywide, the nation’s biggest mortgage lender and a symbol of the subprime crisis, is a principal target of the new NTIC campaign along with Wells Fargo. The campaign’s platform calls on the two huge subprime lenders to “take the lead” in the industry by refinancing (instead of foreclosing) unaffordable loans and by instituting a two-year moratorium on Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) “resets”, which are expected to cause serious mortgage payment problems for millions more borrowers in the coming year.
P.S. Here’s the PD’s online coverage by Mike O’Malley.