This week in the ongoing battle of the People vs the Banks, the people are winning!
Oakland: Oakland City Staff, Mayor Quan, Congressperson Barbara Lee and State Assembly person Nancy Skinner hosted a press briefing alongside community allies in support of a Comprehensive Foreclosure Prevention Package. (Check out out CJJC member Manuel De La Paz as he tells how the threat of foreclosure has impacted his family).
On October 16, the plan was approved by the full council, opening up a new avenue of foreclosure help for tenants and homeowners.
Causa Justa and a host of other community organizations have been fighting for years, demanding that the city respond to the foreclosure crisis with local strategies to hold the banks accountable and keep Oakland’s tenants and homeowners in their homes.
The program includes:
• Outreach to impacted families to connect people to their rights and resources for them to stay in their homes
• City staff dedicated to monitoring the banks and if they are following new policies from the Homeowner Bill of Rights and regulations from the State Attorney General’s Settlement
• City Staff dedicated to escalate against the Banks on behalf of families struggling to keep their homes
• A program called ROOT, that will buy back foreclosed homes from banks for homeowners that have been foreclosed on and want to keep their homes
• Increased city partnerships and resources for legal assistance, counseling services and a one stop Housing Assistance Center that will open up by the end of this year!
CJJC is proud to have worked with our allies to achieve this and thank all of our partners for your work, advocacy and dedication to protecting the right to stay for tenants and homeowners.
Thanks to – City of Oakland, ACCE, OCO, Alameda County Public Health Department, East Bay Housing Organizations, Enterprise Community Partners, Community Housing Development Corp., HERA, LISC, One Pacific Coast Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, Urban Strategies Council, California Reinvestment Coalition, OCCUR, Allen Temple Housing and Econ. Dev. Corp., Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Center, Family Bridges, Centro Legal de la Raza, SEIU 1021, East Bay Community Law Center, Housing Group of East Bay Move On and California Housing Finance Agency.
San Francisco: Also last Tuesday, hundreds of people supported the family of Juana Tello, POWER staff and leader of POWER’s Free Muni for Youth Campaign.
The Tello family’s home was purchased by Fannie Mae after a foreclosure, and Fannie Mae tried to evict the Tello’s from their home. Little did Fannie know, the Tello’s have been active in their community for years and have a strong base of supporters ready for action. After making calls to Fannie Mae CEO Timothy Mayopoulos to demand that Fannie Mae stop the eviction, the eviction has been postponed.
CJJC along with POWER thanks all of the folks that spread the word, made the calls, and signed up to support the family! Together, we bought time to chart our next steps to get the home back from Fannie Mae. We will continue to need your support to win for the Tello’s and the rest of theFannie and Freddie 99, families that are fighting to stay in their homes.
As we celebrate these victories, we must remember that we are in a long-term battle against the banks to take back the homes and land that belongs to us, to our communities. Land is for housing, and for the basic needs of people, and not to be exploited by the banks to continue to make profit for the 1%.
Meanwhile the fight continues…. Did we bail out Freddie Mac so they can use our money to put us out of our homes? No! The Perez family is fighting Freddie Mac for their home after they were denied a loan modification three times. The Perez family is determined to stay and want their home turned over to a community land trust. Show that you support their demand.
They will be squaring off with Fannie Mae at a hearing on Thursday October 18. Let’s pack the court. We will meet at the Alameda County Superior Court, 1225 Fallon St., Oakland at 1:00 for the 1:30 hearing in Dept 31. We need our homes more than Freddie Mac needs one more.
The numbers of tenants in foreclosure in California is rising, and the number of single family homes is expected to spike in the last few months of this year. This battle is far from over, and we need all of your support to keep the pressure on the banks, especially on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who control over 60% of California’s residential properties in foreclosure.
If you have any questions, would like more information, or would like to directly support our campaign work, please contact, robbie@cjjc.org
The struggle continues.