Sorry you lost your home: Americans deserve more than an apology for the foreclosure fraud epidemic

[Dems to Win]

http://www.salon.com/2016/08/09/sorry-you-lost-your-home-americans-deserve-more-than-an-apology-for-the-foreclosure-fraud-epidemic/

Despite talk of "recovery," former homeowners remain scarred after their government abandoned them
by DAVID DAYEN

I wrote my book for them, for everyone who suffered as a result of the largest consumer fraud in American history and the greatest economic collapse in nearly a century. They shouldn’t be forgotten. In fact, somebody should apologize to them for having to bear the weight of the financial collapse on their shoulders, even while that suffering was exacted through outright fraud. It might as well be me.

In “Chain of Title”, I detailed how three foreclosure victims uncovered an unparalleled pattern of deceit: mortgage companies systematically using false evidence in courtrooms and county offices to take people’s homes away. This routine document fabrication covered up the unspeakable crime of breaking the chain of title on millions of home mortgages, confusing the underlying ownership and damaging 350 years of functioning property records law.

It was a work of history, depicting events mainly in 2009 and 2010. But that history lives on in my email inbox, to this very day.

snip.....

Political analysts still manage to wonder why people are angry in a time of economic recovery, without ever even hinting recognition of the scarring impact of the foreclosure disaster. More than 9.3 million American families gave up their home between 2006 and 2014, either in a foreclosure or a short sale or some other transaction. That translates to about 14 million people, all of whom have family and friends and colleagues who at least know of the pain caused by the foreclosure crisis. There have been more since then.

It didn’t have to turn out that way. All of the losses didn’t have to be placed upon homeowners. Somebody could have been held responsible. We could have enforced the simple rule that you can’t take a person’s home with false evidence. This bare minimum would have engendered some faith that the system works, that justice still burns somewhere in America.

So to those who have reached out to me, and those who haven’t, to everyone still feeling the pain of foreclosure, I have just one thing to say. Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And when in your desperation you turned to me, I failed you. Because I wish I had something better to express than an apology.

I know people who lost their homes, and I'm still angry. I wish President Obama would find an effective way to help these people in his final months in office.

[Skittles]

1. yes, the government failed bigtime

they helped the very people who caused the problems

[freebrew]

2. +1...nt

[Igel]

3. Much of this is dieengenuous.

And that's why I have trouble getting upset about it.

Take where I live now. Let's assume that the chain of title was broken. The fact remains that the family defaulted on their loan, which was probably too large for their income with no margin of safety built in when the recession probably reduced their family income. Let's add in the bonus that they didn't live within their means otherwise, as the sheer number of internet connections, splitters, and satellite dishes attest (plus the phone bills and various other kinds of bills that showed up after we moved in). They were fools, and stripped the house of everything they could because they were "wronged." I had to fix watermelon-sized holes in the drywall and replace major appliances that had originally come as part of the house. If it didn't work, they left it behind--from stove (how do you break a stove?) to dishwasher. They defaulted, but it was somebody else's fault. Somebody tricked them into overspending, taking out too large a mortgage, etc.; they were fools and needed a parent to supervise them, I guess, even though they were married with 3 kids.

The company that (we'll assume) violated the law by not having a good paper trail was still the one who owned the debt and was wronged. This wasn't the mortgage company, who was made whole when the mortgage aggregator bought the mortgage (the very idea of "chain of title" implies that a variety of people owned the paper). This is sort of like letting somebody walk during a trial because of a mistake in the warrant, whatever all the other proof is.

Now, there were cases of debt owners' going after innocent homeowners--they hadn't defaulted, they'd tried to make payments in good faith, etc. But let's not overgeneralize a few percent to the whole and assume that those are typical when they're not. There's enough blame to go around, and if we declare one major player in the debacle free of blame then we're left with a gaping hole in our assignment of responsibility. In fact, we've tried to undo many of the regulatory changes that were intended to prevent a repeat of that portion of the disaster, and called that roll-back "good".