Office to fight foreclosures opens in Trumbull County

WARREN — The East Side Organizing Project, a Cleveland group known for pressuring lending institutions into working with borrowers in the throes of foreclosure, has opened a Trumbull County office.

ESOP has hired Lisa Freeman Williamson of Howland, a life-long Trumbull County resident, to run the new office, which is located in the Alliance Community Outreach Program building, 2051 Niles Road.

ESOP, formed in 1993, is best known for its direct action programs. The activists go to the offices of lending institutions dressed in shark costumes and throw two-inch plastic sharks at the businesses to demonstrate their belief that the lenders are loan-sharking.

The demonstrations are designed to force a top-level decision maker to contact ESOP to work out a memorandum of understanding that states the lender will stop its predatory lending practices.

Freeman Williamson said the ESOP has such agreements with 65 percent of the lenders who have loans in the Mahoning Valley and has had an 85 percent success rate in getting foreclosure actions stopped.

The funding to operate the Warren office comes from a $50,000 grant from the Raymond John Wean Foundation announced last month. The office is prepared to help homeowners in foreclosure from throughout the Mahoning Valley.

ESOP says it has agreements with such big-name lenders as Countrywide, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

Contact Freeman Williamson at (330) 360-8144.