Toll of home foreclosures is too high to fight alone

The assault on the AMERICAN dream of home ownership remains a haunting aftereffect of the Great Recession. Foreclosures continue to rise at an alarming rate, with banks shuttering the doors on a record 3.8 million homes last year.

As Vindicator Staff Writer John W. Goodwin Jr. pointed out in a front-page story earlier this week, foreclosure actions by financial institutions continue to increase in the Valley as well. In Mahoning County, for example, they’ve skyrocketed 466 percent over the past 15 years, according to Policy Matters Ohio, a nonpartisan policy-research institute.

Unfortunately, most of these devastating life-altering legal actions unfold unchallenged. Of the 1,819 foreclosures in Mahoning County in 2010, 90 percent of the mortgage holders did not raise a fight or even hire an attorney, according to Bruce Broyles, a Boardman attorney specializing in foreclosure issues.

As he and others point out, a variety of options from legal and social-service agencies are available to stave off the loss of one’s home. Other help is at hand to assist delinquent mortgage holders from becoming targets of foreclosure in the first place. Given the many documented cases of fraudulent actions from predatory lenders, those in the cross-hairs of foreclosure owe it to themselves to wage an informed and valiant fight. The impact of foreclosure devastates individuals and communities on many levels.

Clearly, the most immediate consequence can be homelessness. Many people rely on family or are able to afford to move into an apartment while they get their finances back on track. But about 10 percent of the homeless population end up on the streets, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Foreclosure also ranks as one of the most credit-damaging events for a person’s credit history. What’s worse is that foreclosures stay on credit reports for at least seven years, meaning those battered by loss of their home will be double-whammied with higher interest rates on home and auto loans, credit cards or other forms of credit for years to come.

On a deeply personal level, foreclosure also invites stress, depression and a lack of self-worth.

COMMUNITY IMPACT

Foreclosures also wield impact on communities large and small. One foreclosure can ring up as much as $34,000 in local government agency bills, according to a joint congressional economics committee Trash removal, unpaid utilities, sheriff and police costs, inspections and potentially even demolition of the property all contribute to that cost.

Foreclosures and a spike in crime have been proven to go hand in hand as well. Many abandoned houses become dumping grounds for trash or seedy havens for drug abuse and other crime. A study by Houston police concluded that when a neighborhood has 2.8 foreclosures for every 100 owner-occupied properties in a year, violent crime in the immediate area goes up 6.7 percent.

With so many detrimental effects tied to foreclosure, efforts to reduce its incidence one filing at a time must be expedited.

Toward that end, helping agencies and resources abound, including Save the Dream, Ohio’s foreclosure prevention campaign at savethedreamohio.gov or 888-404-4674, ohiofraudclosure.blogspot.com to provide legal tips to those already hit by a filing, Ohio Legal Services, the Ohio attorney general’s office and others.

As Peter Cozmyk, a foreclosure defense attorney who spoke at a recent Austintown workshop on foreclosure, puts it, “Knowledge is power, and homeowners can more effectively fight foreclosure by knowing about the process and understanding how it directly applies to their situation.”