Save Ann’s Home! MLK Day march for housing rights

Joel Kilgour Jan 13, 2012 8 Comments

Background: Ann Lockwood is the owner of a modest East Hillside home. She walks with a prosthetic leg after a major medical crisis that also cost her a good-paying job. Ann is now at risk of losing her home to foreclosure by State Farm Bank, even though she is working again and able make consistent mortgage payments.

Please join us on Monday, MLK Day, at 10am to send this message from our community to State Farm: 1. cancel the sheriff’s sale of Ann’s home, and 2. provide Ann with a fixed-rate loan modification she can afford. Gather at 8th St and 7th Ave E, then march to the Washington Center to join the main MLK Day celebration.

This kind of people power is saving homes across the country, and we aim to do the same for our neighbors in Duluth.

What: Save Ann’s Home — March for housing rights

When: Monday, January 16, 10 to 11 a.m.

Where: Meet at the corner of 8th St & 7th Av E, march to the Washington Center

Who: Project Save Our Homes, Loaves & Fishes Community, Minnesotans for a Fair Economy, and hillside neighbors

More on Facebook, and check here for a complete listing of MLK weekend events.


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8 Comments

scotts

about 13 years ago 

Ann is in a terrible situation, and I'm glad she's now working and able to make her payments again.  However, if folks really loved Ann and not an activist agenda, they would host a fundraiser to catch her up to avoid her sheriff's sale.  Instead, she's a poster-lady for an agenda, for attention to petitions, marches, and further exploitation of the poor and vulnerable by Loaves and Fishes and related community organizers.  Interesting how this is organized by many who rely solely on donations to live in houses that they never had to pay for, don't pay rent, and use and exploit homeless folks, interns, and volunteers so they can have the privilege of "voluntary poverty" to engage in political resistance without knowing what it's like to work to pay a mortgage, utilities, or taxes.  (I know because I lived in one of the Loaves and Fishes houses for a year and saw the abuses firsthand).  
-Scott Schumacher
Eden Prairie, MN

TimK

about 13 years ago 

Remember when Loaves and Fishes created a national economic meltdown? Yeah, me neither...

lojasmo

about 13 years ago 

The fuck are you on about, Scott?

Jadiaz

about 13 years ago 

Couple of questions: 1. Did Ann try to work with State Farm when everything happened? 2. Is Ann a bit behind, or extremely behind? 3. Are you going to try to save everyone else's homes who couldn't make their mortgage payments due to hardship? 4. Why Ann and not another family or individual?

I feel bad for Ann, but as Scott pointed out this feels more like a chance for Loaves and Fishes to promote itself than a legitimate attempt to save Ann's home. Organize a group to buy the home from the sheriff's sale and give it back to Ann, because frankly, that's the only thing that will save her home.

Bret

about 13 years ago 

What Scott and Jadiaz don't realize is that Project Save Our Homes is about not just saving Ann's home, but in contributing to structural, system and transformative change, and Ann understands this as well as all of us involved.

These problems were all too often caused by abusive financial schemes crafted by the banks.  And while creditors have remedies available to them, one of those remedies should not be to throw people out into the streets.

So, simply taking up a collection will not hold the banks accountable nor will it contribute to that structural, systemic and transformative change we need in in order to ensure we're not taking up collections over and over again for years to come.

wildgoose

about 13 years ago 

I don't know much about Ann's situation, but it does sound very sad. I agree that banks and mortgage lenders really messed up badly, especially in the least 15 years.  I think that there were predatory loan processes, too.  

Paying her mortgage up does seem to be the wisest course of action to me.  Now if she could have the sheriff sale and the loan re-modified first that would be ideal.  I actually do believe that foreclosure is actually a reasonable remedy for banks to retain - but only after all other pathways have been tried.  It sounds like she really needs a loan remodification. At today's near zero per cent interest rates I'm sure that the bank probably isn't too thrilled about that and that might be why they are dragging their feet.  I would like to see more remedies for PEOPLE to appeal aggressive and predatory lenders' tactics.  Also, Jadiaz and Scott seem to be referencing the idea of moral hazard, that people pay a price for breaking deals.  I'd like to see a moral hazard in play for lenders who made stupid loans, or who "lost" paperwork, or made other mistakes.  Not that we liquidate all of their assets and throw them out on the street (like they appear to be trying to do with Ann in this case) but that they are forced to take some bitter medicine of their own, as in refinancing the loan under less attractive terms than we had for the housing bubble.   These are all just some ideas I have, I'm not sure how to put them into play and maybe they're not practical.  Then again throwing 600,000 Americans who can't make their house payments is not real practical, either. I say we get some legislation or simply that "moral hazard" cranking, get these issues resolved pronto and get this country back to work.  

A comment on Scott's comment:  Loaves and Fishes had been in this community helping people for around 30 years.  I have personally seen the work they do over the decades and I've seen the results of what they do, too. For at least the last 20 years I have interacted with Loaves and Fishes Community members weekly, if not daily, and I've seen first hand what they do. Yes, maybe there are some freeloaders here and there, that happens everywhere.  But by and large the L & F community members work very, very hard to serve, educate and mobilize our community members, especially the most vulnerable and at the times WHEN they are most vulnerable.  All they ask in return for this is that people continue to give them the opportunity to do the work by donating for basic needs for simple living.  I don't think that it is a scam, whatsoever.  I was personally a little offended with the tone of your comments, too, although you are entitled to your opinion and I am sorry if you feel as though you were treated unfairly in your time there.

Sam

about 13 years ago 

My experience with L&F is a lot like Wildgoose's.  Imperfect they may be, but they are great people doing important work.

Also, I see no problem relating Ann's experiences to the experiences of other members of the community.  If we pretend like everything is an individual situation and an individual problem (as "scotts" does), we fail to see the pattern that needs to be addressed.  

The "Duluth Model" is a great example of taking a lot of people's individual experiences, seeing the patterns, and addressing it effectively.  Before the Duluth Model, most everyone just kept quiet and thought in terms of the individual, as in "I am the exception to the rule and it is just my husband who does this."  But what they came to realize is that there was a pattern, and it was a social problem that required changes in how the entire community worked.

So relating Ann's experiences to others is just a DARN good idea!  Ann can learn from others, they can learn from Ann, and we all can see the patterns of injustice that need to be fixed.  Isn't that what democracies are supposed to do?

YouKnowMe

about 13 years ago 

Yesterday was actually Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. People frequently drop the last part of the name of the holiday and forget what the day is set aside for... serving others. For more information about the King Holiday and Service Act signed by Bill Clinton in 1994, please see http://mlkday.gov/

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