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Friday, April 24, 2009
I saw the movie The Soloist with Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. The movie is based on the true story of a newspaper columnist who befriends a mentally ill homeless musician. The portrayal of his life on the streets was very moving, and also provided a glimpse into the enormous homeless community in Los Angeles. Ninety thousand people are homeless there, enough to constitute an entire city on their own. In Seattle, we have about 8,500 homeless residents among us.
As a bankruptcy lawyer, I feel particularly compelled to do what I can to help end homelessness. Many of our clients at Resolve Legal file bankruptcy to avoid foreclosure, and we do our best to help our clients save their homes. Few of our clients, however, face absolute homelessness. In these deeply uncertain times, though, we expect that we will see increasing numbers of formerly middle class failies who will spend some time with nowhere to call home.
We live in the world’s wealthiest nation, and we should be able to provide a place for every one of our citizens to sleep. Hopefully, this movie will inspire people to do something to help change the shameful fact of homelessness: donate money to a shelter, call or write your legislator, volunteer.
Many homeless people, when asked, say the worst part is the way people ignore them, overlook their very existence. It costs nothing to meet a person in the eyes and wish them a good day. Merely by recognizing the humanity of a fellow citizen, we can make a big difference. Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all.
POSTED BY Resolve Legal AT 5:17 pm Comments (0)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
I have not been blogging much, first because of snow days and Holidays, and then January began. There is a new note of desperation in the voices of the calls that are coming in. Clearly, fear is setting in for many people struggling with debt. The overwhelmingly bad economic news is not helping, either. And it seems obvious to us all that it is not likely to get better any time soon.
There is also hope in the air, as we count the days to the new administration taking office. But we all know that nothing can change overnight.
We have been trying to help our clients get mortgage modifications, but we are finding it to be virtually impossible. Almost every call we make results in a different answer after holding and waiting for a very long time. As far as I know, our office has not had one successful loan modification yet.
For that reason, I am hoping that the new Congress will quickly enact bankruptcy legislation that will allow people to modify their mortgages upon bankruptcy court order in a Chapter 13. Here in Seattle, we have great bankruptcy court judges who have the skill and the sense to help us get through these problems. And so, we wait and we hope, and we try to help our clients and prospective clients stay calm in the meantime.
POSTED BY Resolve Legal AT 8:57 pm Comments (0)
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Two news stories in the last few days provide a stark illustration of the different treatment afforded the rich and the struggling middle class. The New York Times reported on the huge bonuses taken by brokers and traders at Merrill Lynch related to the sales of mortgage-backed securities. The story, which you can read in full here,details the hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and compensation paid out in the last few years for arranging investments in mortgages that are now in foreclosure. As I have been saying for some time now, all these home loans were being packaged up and sold for huge profits — and the rich keep getting richer. No one was really attending to the fundamental question of whether the borrowers had the ability to repay these loans; to the contrary, mortgage brokers had incentives to put people in larger, riskier loans because they earned a larger fee if they did! Then, their bosses and their bosses’ bosses repackaged and resold these same mortgages, each taking their cut along the way. All that money got taken out of the system and put into the pockets of investment bankers on Wall Street, and it’s not coming back. One of the people in the story is now advising firms who are dealing with troubled mortgage lenders — wonder what he charges for his services?
On the other end of the spectrum, Bush’s government solution to help homeowners, the Hope for Homeowners program sponsored through HUD, has received a grand total of 312 applications. Even the government admits the program is a failure, as the Washington Post reports today, here. I have never really trusted that our government was going to do anything that would really help borrowers who are in trouble, and the more time goes on, the more cynical I become. I am really starting to wonder if they are purposefully introducing programs they know won’t work to stall for time while the financial services industry tries to get a strategy together. For instance, all this talk about a 4.5% mortgage program, designed for first time home buyers to buy distressed real estate — how does that help the struggling home owner who is facing a foreclosure? It doesn’t! It helps banks and mortgage lenders by providing a new class of potential customers, and the profits that they might generate, albeit at smaller margins. The argument that this will keep home prices up doesn’t help troubled borrowers either. They need a way to pay a mortgage they can afford, and higher home prices will not give them that.
The bright spot is that the more government proposals that fail, the greater the likelihood that Congress will have to relent and reform the bankruptcy code to permit loan modification. President-elect Obama advocated for just such a change on the campaign trail. Let’s hope that he’s true to his word.
POSTED BY Resolve Legal AT 10:28 pm Comments (999)
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The government announced this evening that it is going to provide more money to Citibank, at least $20 billion for starters, and up to $300 billion in “guarantees” for bad loans. The Treasury Department is still unwilling to allow any of the bailout money to be used to help homeowners who are struggling to pay their mortgages. And we have been finding that the mortgage companies and banks are almost impossible to reach on the phone, so even if they are willing to try to help, you probably can’t get through to them to find out.
We are hopeful that President-elect Obama’s announcements tomorrow about his plan for economic stimulus will have some impact, but frankly, we are not too optimistic. So much of the economy has been based on overspending — credit card debt, home equity, store credit — there is going to be some painful adjustment no matter what programs the new administration brings to the table. And unfortunately, we still have to wait two more months to implement those plans.
I have noticed that the previews of tomorrow’s big speech have not included much mention of what will be proposed for housing. We continue to hope that bankruptcy reform will ultimately be enacted. Currently, virtually all types of loans can be modified in a bankruptcy except residential real estate loans for primary residences. We could help so many more people if the law protected homeowners as well as it protects Lehman Brothers and Circuit City.
I don’t even know what to say about the car companies, except that I wish Resolve Legal had a private jet that I could fly around in. Showing up at Congress to ask for bailout money in a private jet is about the same as showing up for bankruptcy court in one. I don’t recommend it.
POSTED BY Resolve Legal AT 10:24 pm Comments (0)
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
It was a momentous election, and I am frankly jubilant at the result. But while our joy is without reservation, our hope that the election will bring true transformation of the disparaties between the have’s and have-not’s is tempered. Too often, we have seen political realities vanquish idealistic visions, and so we are not unduly optimistic that Barack Obama will be able to rescue us from the terrible mess we are in.
The election was long and hard, but the hardest work is clearly ahead. Our economy has been virtually destroyed by the unregulated growth of toxic mortgages and their subsequent demise. We hope that our new administration will act quickly and decisively to improve the environment for borrowers, and thereby strengthen this faltering economy for all of us.
At the recent annual Consumer Rights Litigation Conference, the following suggestions for change were offered.
*Create mandatory federal standards for loan products secured by a primary residence.
*Standardize loan products, and enact regulations to ensure that most loan are 30-year fixed mortgages, except in special circumstances.
*Re-enact usery laws, with a floating rate tied to some appropriate measure.
*Provide incentives to encourage best pricing and affordability of home mortgages, including underwriting based only on the payment stream of the loan.
*Require that loans be affordable, i.e., 38 percent or less of the home owner’s household income.
*Enact legislation ensuring full assignee liability for all purchasers of home mortgages.
*Amend the tax code to provide less incentive to add mortgage debt to primary homes.
*Clarify the duty owed by servicers to the borrower, and improve RESPA.
*Prohibit foreclosures without first offering a loan modification.
*Prohibit loans with a loan to value ratio greater than 90 percent.
*Amend the bankruptcy code to permit modification of home mortgages, even over the objections of the lender but subject to the oversight of the court.
Quite a wish list, I realize. But without significant and courageous action, our mortgage troubles are only beginning. Let’s hope our new government can do better.
POSTED BY Resolve Legal AT 10:30 pm Comments (0)
Monday, October 6, 2008
Both the New York Times and NPR reported in the last few days that campaign workers are concerned that voting rights will be affected by the recent increase in foreclosures. They are anticipating challenges to voters’ registration status at the polls based on foreclosure records, and are seeking to remind people to update your address as soon as possible to ensure that you are not denied the right to vote.
Losing a home through foreclosure is traumatic enough — you shouldn’t have to worry about losing your right to vote as well.
POSTED BY Resolve Legal AT 10:43 pm Comments (0)
Thursday, October 2, 2008
In the face of such an overwhelming push to pass the Paulson bailout plan immediately, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one having doubts. The New York Times editorial page published this today:
Show Us the Hope
At last count, six million people were expected to default on their mortgages this year and next, putting them at risk of losing their homes unless they can catch up in their payments or catch a break on their loan terms. And they’re not the only ones at risk. As prices drop, millions of people who have never missed a mortgage payment stand to lose their home equity. Leaving these Americans out of the bailout bill is unwise and unfair, but neither Congress nor the Bush administration has ever shown anywhere near the sense of urgency to rescue homeowners at the bottom of the collapse as they have for the financiers at the top of it. Take, for example, a new government program that took effect on Wednesday with the aim of helping as many as 400,000 struggling homeowners keep their homes. Even before it got started, the program – called Hope for Homeowners – was looking like a lead balloon. Under the program, the government will insure up to $300 billion in new, more affordable loans for troubled borrowers. For the insurance to kick in, however, lenders must first voluntarily refinance the delinquent mortgages by reducing the loan balances to 90 percent of the home’s current market value. In exchange, lenders would avoid the expense of foreclosure and uncertainty about being repaid. The government would stem the social and economic damage of more foreclosures, at presumably little risk to taxpayers.
There’s just one problem. At a Congressional hearing in September, lenders were lukewarm about participating in the new program – reluctant, it seems, to take the loss that comes with reducing loan balances.The lenders, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and CitiMortgage, a unit of Citigroup, all said they were taking other steps to help troubled borrowers, like reducing a loan’s interest rate or extending its term. That’s helpful, but the industry’s efforts don’t go far enough: defaults and foreclosures continue to outstrip efforts to rework bad loans. As home prices fall, the most effective modification is to reduce the loan balance; otherwise, borrowers are in the position of repaying a loan higher than the value of the property. That burden can become unbearable when combined with unemployment or reduced work hours or unexpected expenses like medical bills.
There are two sides to the mortgage mess. The mortgage industry, in pursuit of upfront fees, deliberately made loans to people who could not afford the payments over time. They justified their actions on the self-serving and unsound basis that rising home values would forever postpone a day of reckoning. Many borrowers – naively, foolishly or selfishly – took on those loans. Yet well over a year into the housing bust, the mortgage industry still calls the shots, as if it is a victim of the borrowers. Congress could change that dynamic, by amending the bankruptcy code to allow the court to modify troubled mortgages. But lawmakers still are afraid to hold the industry accountable. Instead, they are offering Hope for Homeowners that looks to be anything but.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/opinion/02thu1.html?_r=1&ref;=todayspaper&oref;=slogin#
POSTED BY Resolve Legal AT 10:14 am Comments (0)
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Marie Antoinette is said to have replied, when told that her poverty-stricken subjects could not afford bread, “Let them eat cake.” Although the story is likely apocryphal, it certainly captures the apparent attitude of our leaders today. While many of us struggle to make ends meet, and many are having particular difficulty making house payments, Congress is stuck in political bickering and maneuvering. The politicians that are supposed to be looking out for us seem much more concerned with their reelection campaigns or their party loyalties than what is in the best interests of the country or its citizens.
Let’s review: for many years, Wall Street investors have been making buckets of money by investing in (and marketing, and packaging, and brokering, and rating) mortgage-backed securities. The system is complicated, but essentially it works like this: a home owner takes a loan to buy a house. That loan is pooled with other loans and sold to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or into a trust, and it is then “securitized.” Investors purchase securities, which represent the right to receive payments from the mortgages in the pool. The amount of money in these transactions is staggering, and the fees, salaries, and bonuses generated made many people very wealthy — private jets, yachts, New York penthouses kind of wealthy.
Now they tell us that we are going to pay for that. And we are not getting much in return. Not even cake. The fundamental flaw with the bailout plan, from what I can tell, is that it buys those very securities that were created for the benefit of the Wall Street investment companies, and does almost nothing to help the homeowners who are footing the bill.
The first version of the bailout plan, presented a few weeks ago, was only three pages long, and it was ridiculously overreaching. Under that original plan, the Secretary of the Treasury would have absolute authority to spend $700 Billion of our money however he saw fit, with no oversight by a court or Congress. The House version, voted down two days ago, was somewhat better, and included various provisions to limit executive compensation and restore any profits made to the taxpayers. Now the Senate has added even more provisions, but the basic underlying flaw is still there — the money is going to pay for the securities, and not to buy the actual home loans. So long as the government does not actually own the loans, there is no reason to think anything will change between lenders and borrowers seeking loan modification or relief.
I have been urging my friends and co-workers to contact their elected officials and ask them to oppose this bailout plan. In recent days, I think that we have all been somewhat worn down. In the absence of any true leadership, we resign ourselves to the belief that this is the best we can do. But I do not believe that — I think we can expect more out of our government, and I think we can continue to insist that we want them to work harder to find a better solution.
Of course, my friends then ask me the logical question: “What should we do then?” For several days, I have been saying I don’t know, and I still believe that it is the responsibility of all those politicians to figure it out. But I think that at a minimum, any bailout should allocate funds to purchase the actual loans, and should set up housing counseling agencies that can arrange new terms for homeowners to be able to pay their loans. A recent New York Times opinion column really stated it best — you can read it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/opinion/27partnoy.html?scp=9&sq;=september+27+2008&st;=nyt
Even with all the amendments, and even though the economy is certainly in crisis and action is needed, I do not support the proposed legislation and I will continue to raise my voice against it. We can do better. In American, in the twenty-first century, we should not be required to pay taxes to refill the coffers of the rich.
Yes, individual homeowners need to be responsible for their own excessive spending too. But the system does not work at all unless homeowners are making their mortgage payments. The only real source of money coming into the securitized mortgage pools is the payments we make. And in my experience, working with people in distress every day, people WANT to be able to pay their mortgages! Any legislation to bail out the lenders must also help people pay their loans by instituting a program with teeth in it for making reasonable modification to those loans.
POSTED BY Resolve Legal AT 10:45 pm Comments (0)
Saturday, September 27, 2008
At Resolve Legal, we only represent individual consumer debtors. As consumer bankruptcy lawyers, we see the distress the mortgage mess has brought to homeowners up close every day. From this vantage point, it’s quite clear that your federal government is not helping you, it’s looking out for financial institutions and Wall Street.
Now, our economy does in fact depend on those banks and other financial institutions. But it also depends on those of us who are making our mortgage payments. As we have seen in the last few weeks, when homeowners can’t pay their mortgages, the system does not work. In general, the people that come to see us who are in trouble with their house payment WANT to pay, they simply cannot. Nothing in the plans that are being considered in Washington will fix this problem and until homeowners are given some tools to help them make those mortgage payments, the whole system will continue to flounder.
A bankruptcy filing can give a homeowner a chance to catch their breath and catch up on their payments. But it is a shame, really, that the lenders cannot do a better job of helping homeowners who want to pay outside the bankruptcy system. In Seattle, at least, we are seeing homeowners who have simply been unable to find anyone at their mortgage company who can help them. And with the demise of Washington Mutual, that situation is sure to get worse.
Over the next few days, I think we will see some sort of legislation come from Washington, despite the fact that most of us taxpayers are opposed to the plans. What remains to be seen is whether the legislation will include any relief for those of us at the bottom of this pyramid.
POSTED BY Resolve Legal AT 9:11 am Comments (3)
Thursday, September 18, 2008
We took a break from blogging, trying to squeeze in a little summer during this very busy, chaotic time. This difficult economy is resulting in lots of new cases at Resolve Legal. So many people are struggling, and we are working hard to help as many of them as we can.
The news is overwhelming for those of us trying to keep up with the meltdown in our economy. We spend time every day studying to understand what is happening in the housing market, the credit markets, and the overall economic environment. One thing is clear — our government has not reacted quickly or decisively to stem the crisis. Now that they have begun to take action in Washington, it seems that while the investment banks and insurance companies can get bail out money from the government, middle class homeowners and working people are not going to get any such assistance.
There are ways to get help. At Resolve Legal, we can sort through your options with you and provide you with information about how to improve your financial outlook. Some resources are on our web site, and information can also be found at the National Consumer Law Center, the Center for Responsible Lending, and other great websites. Please call us if you would like to talk to a lawyer. And keep reading — we’re back for fall and eager to hear from you.
POSTED BY Resolve Legal AT 8:11 pm Comments (0)
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