[Marxism] Sheriff in Chicago Ends Evictions in Foreclosures

["Charles Brown" <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/09chicago.html 

Sheriff in Chicago Ends Evictions in Foreclosures
By JOHN LELAND
Published: October 8, 2008

Law enforcement officers in Chicago will no longer evict residents
from foreclosed properties, Sheriff Thomas J. Dart of Cook County
announced Wednesday.

The department was on pace to conduct 4,700 foreclosures this year,
nearly triple the number from two years ago, Sheriff Dart said.

Housing advocates said that they thought the measure was the first of
its kind, but that in recent years, several sheriffs and judges around
the country had taken other steps to slow foreclosure proceedings,
like requiring lenders to produce titles proving they owned the
properties in question. In Philadelphia this year, Sheriff John D.
Green temporarily suspended sales of foreclosed properties.

Sheriff Dart said he took the measure because an increasing number of
the residents being evicted were renters who might have been dutifully
paying their rent, and might have had no knowledge that the owner was
behind on the mortgage.

Under a new Chicago law, renters are entitled to a 90-day grace
period, starting at the time a foreclosure sale is confirmed, before
they can be evicted.

Sheriff Dart said the families in foreclosed properties were often not
notified that they would have to leave, and were not given this grace
period. Sometimes their first sign of trouble was the appearance of
deputies at the door, demanding that they leave.

"It started with just a couple cases like that, but they kept
multiplying," Sheriff Dart said. "Just in the past month, about a
third of the people we were asked to evict were under very
questionable circumstances. It got to the point that enough was
enough."

Officials at the national Mortgage Bankers Association were
unavailable for comment, a spokesman said. Officials at the Illinois
Mortgage Bankers Association did not return calls seeking comment.

On a recent case, deputies were called to evict residents at a
foreclosed building on North Spaulding Avenue, and arrived to find six
families who were all paying rent to the landlord.

"All the time we paid every month, he never said nothing," said Alma
Aquino, who lived in one unit with her husband, their two children,
and Mrs. Aquino's mother and sister, for a rent of $850. "My husband
tried to explain, but the sheriffs said we can't talk, we need to
evacuate."

The family ended up staying, and Sheriff Dart, who has supported
legislation to protect residents in foreclosures, soon stopped
evictions.

Sheriff Dart said the evictions had taken an emotional toll on his
staff. "It's one of most gut-wrenching things we do, seeing little
children put out on the street with their possessions. And the hard
part is that the parent played by all the rules, and they're being
traumatized."

Nationally, only about 10 percent of residents in properties with
subprime mortgages - the ones most likely to go into foreclosure - are
renters, said Eric Halperin, director of the Washington office of the
Center for Responsible Lending, an advocacy group. But in some cities
the figure is much higher. Daniel Lindsey of the Home Ownership
Preservation Project run by Legal Assistance of Chicago, estimated
that half of the city's foreclosures involved renters.

"This is a big deal in the sense that it shows the pressures local
governments are under when they're forced to carry out those
foreclosures and evictions," Mr. Halperin said. "It's another example
of how the foreclosure crisis is overwhelming our institutions.
Homeowners and renters can't get the relief they're entitled to under
the law."




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