Foreclosure Mediation Hearings

Tuesday Hearing on Housing Crisis

Photo by Cheryl Jones of the Grapevine photo project. For information on prints contact NEOCH at 216/432-0540 or check out the Homeless Grapevine on the streets next week.

On Tuesday July 22, 2008, Councilman Jay Westbrook held a Cleveland City Council hearing featuring the County Court of Common Pleas and their new mediation program. Judge Eileen Gallagher attended along with the Court's mediation staff. With 14,000 foreclosures in 2007 and a similar number expected in 2008, this one staff person seems inadequate to meet the demand, but it is a good first step. The most stunning news was from one of the Court staff who said that he expects 2 or 3 more years of this crisis. Knowing that government employees always underestimate everything, this is a startling revelation. The City of Cleveland cannot take another three years of foreclosures at the current level. We will die and cease to function as a city with three more years of 14,000 foreclosures each year.

This is why the advocates' panel which came up second were so critical to this discussion. We heard from Frank Ford of Neighborhood Progress, Bill Callahan--community advocate, Mike Piepsny of the Cleveland Tenants Organization, and Andrea Price of the Legal Aid Society brought forth a strategy for a moratorium on foreclosures. The Plain Dealer supports this idea in an editorial later in the week. The House and Senate passed a foreclosure/Save Fannie and Freddie bill that will bring $26 million to the County. RealtyTrac published a report that shows Cleveland Statistical Metro Area had the sixth highest number of foreclosures in 2007. All these together make all the proposals tame in the face of three or more years of this tsunami of foreclosures. We need a moratorium; we need renter protections as outlined by CTO; we need a massive legal settlement by the cheating mortgage brokers; we need a massive infusion of dollars from the feds who looked the other way for eight years; we need the State landbank proposal; and we need a new homesteading act that turns over abandoned properties to the masses. The current owners of the land have run it into the ground where it is infecting all of our neighborhoods. It is time to strip them of their property rights and turn it over to anyone willing to rebuild and save our city.

I was on the JV team and testified after most councilmen had left and had to compete with the angry lady who demanded to testify even though she had nothing to say about foreclosures. One side note, it was refreshing to see 11 council members attend a summer hearing. I guess that the PD article really got these guys to show up, before they are downsized by the Charter Review process. Anyway, my contribution to the proceedings were that there are 2,000 homeless people sleeping in a temporary bed every night or 19,000 over the course of the year who are ready, willing and able to help. They want to have some of the properties turned over to them to preserve and protect. They want to be allowed to live in these properties as the owner is leaving, but before the property is stripped clean. There are many with good credit, but a low income job that want to be renters in these places. There are others with skills like drywalling, plumbing and electrical--some are amazing craftmen and craftswomen, who could put these houses back together to save these neighborhoods. We need to think big and come up with large scale change that can end this crisis and re-build Cleveland this year.

Brian
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.