15,000 foreclosures in NYC each year–and the rate isn’t slowing down.
What happens to foreclosed properties in NY? They’re sold at foreclosure auctions held across the 5 boroughs. Sometimes, speculators purchase homes at discounted rates, renovating and reselling them at inflated prices. More often–and much worse–the banks that foreclose upon us buy back our homes at auctions to balance their books. Then they evict us and homes sit empty.
Families are displaced, communities are torn apart, and NYC neighborhoods are gentrified and made inaccessible to working people.
Wall Street is to blame for the onslaught of foreclosures. Bankers turned our mortgages into “securitized instruments,” and sold them for profit at a voracious pace on the stock market. Their greed demanded the creation of more and more mortgage-backed securities, and they used predatory loans to lure more homeowners into mortgages with impossible interest rates.
They gambled on our ability to pay our mortgages. They gambled with our pensions.
They hoped that they would not get caught holding our mortgage when we defaulted.
And then the interest rates spiked. We drained our savings. And we all defaulted.
Because they bought and sold carelessly, the banks that are foreclosing on our communities often cannot identify which institution actually holds the mortgage note. As a result, the wrong institutions have often initiated foreclosure actions against homeowners, or even initiated actions against individuals who never even took out a mortgage in the first place.
And yet the Courts allow the banks to foreclose without proving that they own our mortgages. And the elected officials allowed the banks to foreclose without being held accountable for creating predatory loans.
So what are we asking for? An immediate moratorium on all foreclosures. A moratorium on all foreclosures until we receive fair and affordable loans.
Mr. Auctioneer, hold all those sales right now!
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