[CitizensTruth] The Other Shoe Drop In The Foreclosure Crisis: Non-completed Forclosures haunt unaware homeowners and communities

[Daniel Stafford]

  *Foreclosures at Record High in First Half 2009 Despite Aid *
http://www.truthout.org/071609A?n 
<http://messenger.truthout.org/ss/link.php?M=33448&N=109&C=3de39b7f486da6123cdc0933336b67b4&L=884> 

Lynn Adler, Reuters: "U.S. home foreclosure activity galloped to a 
record in the first half of the year, overwhelming broad efforts to 
remedy failing loans while job losses escalated."

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/07/bank_walkaways_from_foreclosed.html


      Bank 'walkaways' from foreclosed homes are a growing, troubling trend


        Posted by Sandra Livingston/Plain Dealer Reporter
        <mailto:slivings at plaind.com> July 19, 2009 09:00AM



John Kuntz/The Plain Dealer

A pair of boarded up windows are overgrown with vines on a foreclosed 
home on the city's East Side. Banks are backing away from properties 
they have foreclosed on creating a new set of issues for neighborhoods.

Renetta Atterberry thought she had lost her East 102nd Street house. So 
she was shocked to learn in January -- five years after her mortgage 
company filed for foreclosure -- that it was still in her name.

Worse, the long-vacant rental home had been vandalized and she faced a 
raft of housing code violations. Since then, she has been saddled with 
debts of* *about $12,000 to pay for demolition and back taxes.

"I thought I had nothing else to do with that home," said Atterberry. "I 
was so embarrassed and humiliated by this."

Her mortgage company didn't buy the house and never took it to sheriff's 
sale to see if somebody else would, leaving Atterberry the legal owner, 
responsible for upkeep and taxes.

These so-called "bank walkaways" are another troubling development in 
the foreclosure crisis, particularly in cities like Cleveland with 
weaker housing markets, say housing advocates and government officials.

Lenders or mortgage companies decide they don't want homes they have 
already foreclosed on...

Full Story:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/07/bank_walkaways_from_foreclosed.html

---------------------

 From Dan:

The above article is a Must Read item. You have a vastly incomplete 
picture of the damage being done by the foreclosure war on the Middle 
Class and municipal governments if you aren't aware of this. This issue 
screams out for a nation-wide organization to track and overcome it. 
These banks are willfully evicting people from their homes, then walking 
away from the half-completed foreclosure process without removing the 
prior homeowners' names from legal title. This leaves the prior 
homeowners, who thought they no longer had anything to do with these 
properties, liable for code violations and back property taxes, while 
leaving the homes rotting away in legal limbo. It has an horrific effect 
on communities.
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