Foreclosure: 10 Ways to Stay Home

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The Nation put together a helpful list of things you can do to avoid foreclosure

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Ten Things You Can Do to Stay in Your Home
The Nation.
March 4, 2009

As a kind of home remedy, so to speak, The Nation and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) have issued a useful list of ten ways to prevent or fight foreclosure.

 1 Make sure your loan has a fixed rate of interest and not a variable rate. If it has variable rate, work with your mortgage lender to get it to a lower fixed rate.

 2 Seek out HUD-certified counselors when you are thinking of refinancing. Contact only nonprofit agencies such as the Legal Aid Society. You do not have to pay a fee to get out of foreclosure.

 3 If you are being foreclosed, call the ACORN foreclosure hot line immediately, at (347) 410-5894.

 4 Do not take out loans that are beyond your financial means. Do not make payments to any institution except your lender.

 5 If you are a renter in a house that has been foreclosed, your landlord must give you notice before evicting you. Once you are given notice, find out how much time you have--the laws vary from state to state. Click here for renters' rights in a particular state. Go to nolo.com, for more information. (If you have info or resources on renters' rights, please send an e-mail to NationTenThings@gmail.com.)

 6 Avoid companies that promise a quick fix. Go to Fraud Guides to see a list of scams.

 7 If you believe you are in a foreclosure scam, contact a lawyer immediately. Visit the National Association for Consumer Advocates or the Institute for Foreclosure Legal Assistance. Always use an attorney with a background in representing families in foreclosure.

 8 Stay in communication with your bank, and always ask questions when you don't understand something that was said or something that you read. Go to the Center for Responsible Lending for an explanation of foreclosure terms.

 9 Support ACORN and other organizations that assist families with foreclosures: Center for Community Change, Take Back the Land, National Low Income Housing Coalition, Housing Assistance Council and National Housing Law Project.

Watch testimonials on the Brave New Films website, fightingforourhomes.com.

10 Call your local ACORN chapter for help. Volunteer to be a home defender in your area. Display an ACORN Foreclosure-Free Zone sign in front of your house or apartment. Tell family and friends facing foreclosure to seek counseling from ACORN, and tell Congress to keep families in their homes. Go to acorn.org and click here for more information on advocacy.

CONCEIVED by WALTER MOSLEY
with research by Rae Gomes

for entire article

National Anxiety is About is About Money, not a Common Race or Ethnic Identity

While people are screaming that immigrants should go home because they are defusing the identity of our country I recall Lamar Alexander's plurbus unim statement- (see post "Ken Burns Little Snicker "September 24, 2007). Alexander says that racial and ethnic minorities are tearing the country apart because they don't want to be part of a unified nation. In this case Harold Meyerson says its economics. People are feeling the squeeze. Credit card debt is too high, everyone has a 400+ car payment, and mortgages now eat up most of peoples monthly earnings. Of course people are angry... and as usual with human beings we look for the scapegoat, this time the undocumented immigrant or diverse ethnic and racial groups in general. Meyerson says the discontent is really caused by a nation-state that is out of touch with its populace, and lets our quest for capitalism take the economy where it wants.

Its easier to blame the people that don't look like you than your national leaders who you are supposed to respect and admire.

During late summer, Juli wrote a post saying that she always like to see what a writer says at the end of their essay, that its usually very telling.

I think she is right on.

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Rise of the Have-Nots
Why More Americans Are Feeling Shut Out of Good Times
By Harold Meyerson
Washington Post
Thursday, September 27, 2007; Page A25




...Apparently, so great is Republicans' loyalty to the Bush presidency that they're willing to overlook their own experience. And, in many cases, to attribute the nation's transformation solely to immigration, rather than to the rise of a stateless laissez-faire capitalism over which the American people wield less and less power. Which helps explain why Republican presidential candidates bluster about a fence on the border and have nothing to say about providing health coverage or restoring some power to American workers.

But the big story here isn't Republican denial. It's the shattering of Americans' sense of a common identity in a time when the economy no longer promotes the general welfare. The world the New Deal built has been destroyed, and we are, as we were before the New Deal, two nations.


meyersonh@washpost.com



For link to entire essay, click title to this post.

Chertoff's Pressure on Congress to Act on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

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The Bush Administration is acting on its own -- (as usual) implementing immigration reform without the help of Congress.. Even Chertoff agrees that this recent move could deeply affect the U.S. economy. The timing of this shows how oblivious the administration is to the country's problemmatic economic situation - which is well described by a NY Times headline "World's Banks Intervene to Calm Volatile Markets."
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Immigration rules may hurt economy
Crackdown on employers could cause havoc in agriculture, healthcare and other industries, Chertoff acknowledges.
By Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 11, 2007


WASHINGTON -- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff predicted painful economic fallout from the array of immigration enforcement measures the administration unveiled Friday in an attempt to choke off the jobs "magnet" that draws illegal immigrants.
...The enforcement approach is aimed partly at placating conservative Republicans who are angry about the administration's failure to enforce existing immigration laws and the president's support for a plan that would have allowed illegal immigrants to become citizens.

But it also could create a political climate that might lead to the comprehensive changes the administration has sought, including a guest worker program and some accommodation for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Chertoff said the provisions, some of which take effect in 30 days, could push corporate America to apply more pressure on Congress to reconsider broad reforms.

"I'm not a lawmaker, but I presume, at some point, somebody's going to take a look and say, 'We've got to find a way to address this problem,' and that's probably going to require some legal changes," he said. But he stressed that "this is not an effort to punish Congress."

Gutierrez framed the issue more starkly: "We do not have the workers our economy needs to keep growing each year. The demographics simply are not on our side. Ultimately, Congress will have to pass comprehensive immigration reform."
...Others expressed skepticism about the Department of Homeland Security's ability to enforce the measures, pointing out that the department cannot even come up with the number of high-skilled visa-holders in the country. "The agency that can't count is now going to go on this enforcement gig," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), chairwoman of the House immigration subcommittee. "We'll see how they do."

Business groups predicted the effect would be broadly felt.

"It's going to be awful; the harvest is going to be awful," said Laura Foote Reiff, co-chairwoman of the Business Immigration Group, predicting the effect on agriculture, where more than half of the 2.5 million workers are believed to be illegal. "People will feel it when they go grocery shopping, when they read in the newspaper that we're importing our meat from China."
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for complete article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig11aug11,0,7151802.story?coll=la-home-center