Michigan activists demand moratorium on foreclosures

People from around Michigan will demand the state legislature enact a two-year moratorium or freeze on home foreclosures and evictions. As activists and victims of home foreclosures and evictions rally at the state Capitol Sept. 17 for Senate Bill 1306, they will do so against a backdrop of economic devastation that has engulfed this Midwestern state for over a decade.

Michigan leads the country in plant closings, unemployment and poverty. It is one of the leading states in terms of home foreclosures caused by predatory lending and the avarice of the banks and mortgage companies. For those who are current on their house payments, property values are plummeting as neighborhoods fill with abandoned and stripped homes.

SB 1306 allows homeowners to go to court for an automatic stay to delay the sheriff’s sale for two years or extend the redemption period from six months to two years. The court would set a reasonable repayment plan for the two years based in part on the borrower’s income and ability to pay. The moratorium provides a reprieve for a long-suffering population whose economic prospects grow dimmer with each passing day. It gives people emergency relief while the struggle continues for a long-term solution to the crisis brought on by the banks.

Activists on Sept. 17 will demand that SB 1306 be moved immediately out of the Senate Banking and Financial Services Committee, where it has languished since its introduction by Sen. Hansen Clarke in May, and that public hearings immediately be held around the state on the foreclosure and eviction crisis.

Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice (MECAWI) activists in early 2007 recognized that the foreclosure epidemic then in full swing in Michigan was the result of two important factors: racist subprime mortgages and predatory lending, already severely impacting workers, the poor and people of color nationwide, coupled with a long-term economic depression in a state where over 460,000 jobs have vanished in the last eight years.

MECAWI organizers began to popularize the demand for a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. In February 2007 activists rallied outside the governor’s state of the state address in Lansing. They demanded Gov. Jennifer Granholm utilize her executive powers under Michigan law to declare an economic emergency and impose a moratorium on foreclosures statewide.

In March 2007, at a town hall meeting called by the governor to discuss the economic crisis in Michigan, MECAWI leader and people’s attorney Jerry Goldberg was heard on statewide media citing relevant case law in support of such measures and challenging Granholm to use her executive powers to alleviate the crisis. Although she then acknowledged her ability to do so, Granholm to this day refuses to even recognize the foreclosure epidemic.

In November 2007 MECAWI organizers began a broad campaign for a declaration of a state of emergency and a moratorium. Organizing meetings were held and activists began mass leafleting and outreach.

They went to phony “prevent foreclosure” forums put on by the state attorney general, where lenders and bankers came to supposedly assist people behind in their house payments or in foreclosure. When they were thrown out of Cobo Hall in Detroit, where the forums were held, attorneys took the city and the attorney general to federal court, where they won a First Amendment victory guaranteeing the right of moratorium activists to leaflet and petition at these events.

MECAWI called another protest outside the governor’s state of the state speech on Feb. 6 of this year. Some 150 people joined in a militant action demanding Gov. Granholm declare a state of emergency and a moratorium. Victims of foreclosure and eviction and those facing foreclosure spoke on the steps of the Capitol demanding relief.

Activists held demonstrations targeting the federal department of Housing and Urban Development for violating its own regulations by not allowing continued occupancies by tenants of FHA-backed homes after foreclosure. Progressive attorneys sued in federal court and won the right of Detroiter Thelma Curtis to stay in her HUD home.

MECAWI activists worked closely with state Sen. Hansen Clarke of Detroit to draft legislation for a two-year foreclosure moratorium similar to the Michigan Moratorium Act in place during the Great Depression. The Michigan Supreme Court upheld that law as constitutional, basing its ruling on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell, which upheld a foreclosure moratorium passed in Minnesota in the 1930s. During the 1930s foreclosure moratoriums were in place in 25 states.

In April 2008, after a press conference announcing the introduction of Clarke’s moratorium bill in the Michigan Legislature, MECAWI offered its next moratorium organizing meeting to launch a statewide coalition. The Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions was formed. Among the coalition’s multinational corps of activists and leaders are people who have faced foreclosures and evictions themselves, including many women in the forefront of this struggle.

The coalition has held numerous rallies, demonstrations, meetings and speak-outs. It successfully stopped the foreclosure and eviction by Countrywide Bank of a disabled senior in Detroit. Activists have protested outside banks and at residences facing foreclosure. They have engaged in several direct actions to move people’s belongings back in after bailiffs enforced the lenders’ repossession of their homes.

The coalition’s legal team has represented dozens of individuals with predatory loans and illegal evictions and stopped many foreclosures. Attorneys are challenging the legality of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) in carrying out foreclosures. MERS, a recording service, holds no interest in home loans, yet it is the foreclosing party in tens of thousands of foreclosures in Michigan and millions nationwide.

Coalition activists have distributed over 50,000 leaflets and have done outreach throughout Michigan. Organizers have gone to Flint, Saginaw, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, Cheboygan, Ypsilanti and other cities, building a grassroots movement in support of SB 1306 and a moratorium on foreclosures.

State Sen. Randy Richardville, chair of the banking committee, has refused to move SB 1306 out of his committee, where it has languished since its introduction. Activists recently demonstrated outside the senator’s home in Monroe, Mich., after Richardville failed to answer the coalition’s certified letter calling for public hearings on the bill.

In an interview with journalist Diane Bukowski, Richardville said the coalition used a “terrorist approach” by protesting at his residence. He claimed there was no recession in Michigan and that “nobody forced people to take out mortgages.”

Bukowski listed some of the financial contributors to Richardville’s last election campaign: HSBC North America, an international financing and mortgage corporation; the political action committees of Michigan Realtors, Comerica Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce; Michigan Manufactured Housing; Michigan Land Title Association; and the Mortgage Bankers Association of Michigan. (The Michigan Citizen, Sept. 7)

Coalition organizers say they will continue to demand Sen. Richardville and the banking committee call public hearings on SB 1306 around the state. They will demand the new administration in Detroit make a formal application to the governor for a state of emergency and a foreclosure moratorium in the city. They will continue to build a grassroots movement to stop all foreclosures and evictions.

The dual catastrophe of economic crisis and mass foreclosures has now spread to every part of the United States. Michigan activists have inspired people elsewhere to begin organizing in response, such as in Los Angeles, where a new union-led movement is demanding a moratorium on foreclosures in California. A victory won in Michigan will have important repercussions nationwide in the struggle to stop the crisis devastating poor and working families everywhere.