Now here’s one of those tanigble victories for the Occupy movement. In Atlanta, protesters saved the house of an Iraq war veteran from foreclosure.
Activists began occupying Brigitte Walker’s home on Dec. 6. By the end of that first week, JPMorgan Chase, which owns her mortgage, began discussing with the activists and Walker the possibility of a loan modification. Chase’s modification offer became official Monday morning. The offer will result, Walker tells The Huffington Post, in hundreds per month in savings.
Before Occupy Atlanta set up its tents on her lawn, Chase had set an eviction date for Jan. 3. Now, Walker, who lives with her girlfriend and her two children, will get to stay in her Riverdale, Ga. home.
“I strongly believe Occupy Atlanta accelerated the process and helped save my home,” Walker says. “If it had not been for them standing up, I probably wouldn’t be having this happy ending.”
This model worked before the Occupy movement, and now it has a much larger pool of activists from which to draw. Obviously we’re not going to solve the foreclosure crisis by having 30 people sit on the lawn of every house facing foreclosure in America. But it’s a fact that the attention generated by these high-profile actions has consistently led to results. That means it ought to be attempted more often. The servicers will foreclose, evict and repossess unless the stories are told. And homeowners will have these vacant properties in their neighborhood, pushing down their property values. One thing that strikes me is that nobody supports these foreclosure defense actions, or resettling families into vacant homes, more than the neighbors. They want a community around them. They don’t want blight in their neighborhoods.
In a way, NACA fulfills this responsibility. They put the individuals in front of the servicers so they cannot bloodlessly make decisions without looking in their eyes. All the Occupy Our Homes movement is doing is forcing attention on the larger issue. Chase will be happy to resolve those and maintain its public image while putting those unseen borrowers into foreclosure. The proper reaction to that is to highlight these issues more. There are thousands of potential stories just like Brigitte Walker’s, and thousands of potential activists ready to act on the situations. It’s time to get to work.




24 Comments

Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
So, so true.
I’ve been saying for awhile that using the now-conventional method of hiring folks with high school diplomas to work in call centers to “resolve” the mortgage issues, after minimal (and I do mean minimal) training is utterly the wrong model, and has been one of the reasons it hasn’t worked. It’s exactly what you describe as making the decisions without looking in the eyes of the people they deal with. They are also taught that the “customers” are deadbeats that they need to get money out of, like any other collection process.
Absolutely right.
Tremble all, ye 1%ers. We’re awake.
“This model worked before the Occupy movement, and now it has a much larger pool of activists from which to draw. Obviously we’re not going to solve the foreclosure crisis by having 30 people sit on the lawn of every house facing foreclosure in America. But it’s a fact that the attention generated by these high-profile actions has consistently led to results. That means it ought to be attempted more often. The servicers will foreclose, evict and repossess unless the stories are told.”
The oligarchy uses fear and intimidation to maintain control and rely on the silence of their victims to keep us from uniting against them. These banksters are no different than rapists to the point that they even blame the victim for the crime.
Semi OT, but Occupy related…
Occupy London: Tank-Driving Protesters Take Over Abandoned Old Street Magistrates’ Court to “Put 1% On Trial”.
Disclaimer – link is to a HuffPoo article.
http://www.facebook.com/100000JobsMission?iq_id=43264793&jp_cmp=cc/NBJobsMissionMBR/sea/na/JobsMIssion
How many homeless Vets does Chase plan to hire?
Any bets the tv stations running Chase’s we want to hire 100,000 vets commercials won’t run this story?
How many Vets does Chase plan to make homeless is the better question.
Just because it’s Huffpoo doesn’t mean its BS.:)
just how does Chase plan to hire 100,000 Vets in this economy when they are laying off workers?
http://www.seiu.org/a/profilechase.php
I don’t think Chase will hire 100,000 vets I think this is all pro banker PR.
Well using these numbers I would guess 3/4 of the vets that are behind on their home payments.
I wasn’t trying to imply that it was BS, or could be. Just warning. I despise HuffPoo and hate providing them click traffic. I know some others feel the same, so I always warn about a HuffPoo article.
http://www.seiu.org/a/profilechase.php
The fact Chase hates Vets is surprising but lets not forget the banks are racist as well. Why isn’t our First Black President doing anything about it?
I can’t find a single story that says McDonalds ever did hire all those workers they promised to last year.
They hired 62,000, after receiving almost 1,000,000 applications.
Thanks I was wrong to suspect McD’s I admit but lets see if Chase hires as many Vets as they claim they want too. Still not sure we can trust McD’s to self report though.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-28/mcdonald-s-hires-62-000-during-national-event-24-more-than-planned.html
I wonder if Chase plans to hire part time workers?
No wonder it is so hard to deal with ptsd when you come home (to America obviously, not your recently foreclosed actual home). Mr. Potter is running America now isn’t he.
When BAC goes bankrupt and closes all it’s branches they will hire and some might be Vets.
Anecdotal, but -
My buddy Mike was part of this mass hiring. 34 hours a week, $8.25 an hour. He was just promoted late last week to shift manager, closing shift. The promotion makes him a full-time employee, 40 hours per week. Raise for the promotion? $0.00.
The explanation from the regional manager? “We need to see what kind of manager you’re going to be before we give you a raise”. Minimum 2 month trial period before he gets any compensation increase.
As a former employee it is rather strange for a manager not to get a raise moving up from crew member. It seems McD’s is saving money anyway they can.
Did he at least get on their Cadillac health plan? BTW how many of the 62,000 hires from this pr stunt would have been hired anyway in the normal course of business. Did McD actually create new jobs ?
This is the source of the photo at the top of the HuffPo post. See the videos with the original article:
“The tank of ideas liberates Old Street magistrates court” | CounterFire.Org | Tuesday, 20 December 2011 12:29 | Written by Elly Badcock
I’m not sure. Those are good questions. Only one I can answer is the first. No, he still doesn’t have any access to health care options, let alone a Cadillac plan.
I like this piece better than the AOL garbage :)
Thanks for the link.
Some people may decide to refinance out of their existing ARM and into a new ARM loan as a temporary solution for avoiding bigger payments. Use 123 Refinance to find rates.