Like thousands of struggling families across the country, I was pushed out of my home.
I’m a childcare worker, and like many of my neighbors in Southeast Queens, I was a victim of a predatory loan. It didn’t take too long for me to fall behind on payments, and once I got sick, it became impossible. I was struggling every day to keep up.
I tried for years to modify my mortgage, but instead of getting a principal reduction, my mortgage was sold for a discount to Lone Star -- a private equity now known for buying tens of thousands troubled mortgages and moving quickly to foreclose.
I was not the exception. It did not take them long to foreclose on me. And because I am a childcare provider, I not only lost my home, but I lost my business and the ability to sustain myself.
It’s been eight years since Wall Street caused the housing crisis. Families like mine, all across the country, are still doing their best to keep their lives together in the aftermath of a massive wave of foreclosures and destabilization.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is supposed to help homeowners and stabilize our communities that are still struggling to recover.
Instead, HUD Secretary Julian Castro has continued the practice of selling large chunks of our distressed communities to Wall Street.
Under Castro’s watch, HUD continues to sell hundreds of thousands of mortgages to firms like Blackstone and Lone Star, who are known to target struggling communities and aggressively push foreclosure. This has caused even more harm to communities of color like my own, which have been disproportionately affected by the foreclosure crisis.
HUD, whose aim is to create sustainable communities and quality affordable homes for all, promised to help homeowners avoid foreclosure by selling their mortgages to nonprofit community organizations.
Yet, in 2015, 98% of HUD-insured loans that Secretary Castro and HUD sold went back to the for-profit Wall Street predators who preyed on communities like mine.
There is an alternative. There are Community Development Financial Institutions that have strong community programs and capital to purchase delinquent mortgages in bulk and help homeowners stay in their homes. These mortgages should be sold to good actors doing modifications with principal reduction and creating affordable housing on the back end.
That’s why we joined a national coalition of homeowners, advocates and progressive organizations, including Daily Kos, to urge Julián Castro to immediately reform HUD’s distressed mortgage sales program. Our petition DontSellourHomesToWallStreet.org has already reached over 100,000 signatures.
There has been some pushback that this is about politics and the national election, rather than the actual policies of HUD, as Markos points out in this blog post. This is about the people in my community: We had dreams, and when we needed assistance we were pushed to the side and sold off. My family and my business, like so many others in communities of color, suffered greatly when we were uprooted by the same people who first sold us predatory loans.
We know the next sale will be in the coming weeks. Secretary Castro needs to take drastic action to stop the wholesale of our neighborhoods to Wall Street.
Now is the time to find out: Is Secretary Castro working for Wall Street or for the American people?
