4
street roots
Feb. 18, 2011
Life after
foreclosure
Organizers seek answers, solutions
through the fog o f foreclosure
BY JOANNE ZUHL
,
STAFF W R IT E R
or the hundreds of thousands of
homeowners who lost their homes to
foreclosure, who felt robbed of their
investment and lied to by the institutions
that sold them on the American Dream,
there is Good Grief America. The name
sums up the frustration and disillusionment
of former homeowners now trying to
survive the aftershocks of the foreclosure
crisis. §§
Nancie Koerber, along with Mark
Thomas, started the nonprofit in August, an
extension of the Southern Oregon
Homeowner Support Group. The
organization came together as a moral
support group for homeowners in
foreclosure and a way to find solutions, but
soon became much more. It is now a a
network focused on education and research
into the causes and possible recourse to
this catastrophic failure.
While it does not directly give legal or tax
advice, Good Grief America brings together
homeowners, lawyers, advocacy groups and
political leaders to explore resource that
will help people stay in their homes longer,
or even permanently. It has trained
E
Nancie Koerber,
founder of Good
Grief America.
hundreds of hom eow ners in O regon on.
we could pot even sell qur home of 18
years. The values on homes are still
dropping 21 percent a year in many rural
communities.
We called our loan servicer, Washington
Mutual, now Chase, to ask for some -
temporary assistance while we could get on
our feet They made it very clear that they
did not help people like us. I asked who
they did help. They said people who are 90
plus days behind. After pleading with them
for three months, we finally gave into their
plan. The result was that they lost our
paperwork, denied us a modification and
tossed us under the foreclosure bus along
uun
....with millinn&.nf o th ers in America
We sta rte d seeing this sam e p a tte rn with
Koerber, who lives in Central Point,
spoke to Street Roots about Good Grief
America and the trauma foreclosure is
having on families and communities.
most of the homeowners we talked to. As
we started regaining our dignity by realizing
that this was a strategic move by the banks,
Mark and I set out on a mission to learn
why and find out what we could do about it
Joanne Zuhl: What stories were you
hearing from homeowners that prompted you
to launch Good Grief America? You talk
about providing moral support for those
suffering foreclosure loss. You speak of it as a
grieving process. This is more than a material
loss.
J.Z.: What do your workshops, movie nights
and programs offer participants?
, w itii
iiiu ic
and w riting for help every day.
Nancie Koerber: Myself and my
husband are homeowners that are dealing
with the problem and we started talking to
a few friends that were in the same
situation. They invited a few more and the
group has grown to over 400 families now in
Oregon. We are also receiving calls from all
over the nation.
We had never dreamed of being in such a
situation and were devastated by it
emotionally. We found that we and others •
were in a form of PTSD, and it was difficult
to make sound financial decisions. Mark and
I had little debt, a lot of equity in our home
and a high credit score.. We had been
carefully planning for our retirement when
the collapse of September 2008 hit us. We
owned a real estate company that we had to
shut down then regroup financially. We had
to cash in on our pensions early as well as
Social Security to survive. The real estate
market crashed quickly around us so that
Wall Street dead beats. With $13 trillion,
the feds could have paid off every sub-prime
loan, every performing loan and had enough
money left over to buy every American that
didn’t own one a new home. What we have
today instead, are rampant foreclosures, no
money on Main Street to rebuild our
economy and a handful of fat cats that are
socking the money away off-shore.
Homeowners are seeking legal and
financial council. Many are filing suits
against the banks and holding them
accountable. Others are stalling the
foreclosures with simple tactics available as
they get their finances in order. We
_ ru rm n tlv have hiindrpHs of families still in
th eir hom es today th a t would have been
thrown to the curb. We have no guarantees
except if we do nothing, we would have lost
our homes and been evicted. We have felt
that the longer we can hang on the more
legal remedies will be available to us. This
has proven to be valid.
J.Z.: What do you think of the plans to get
rid o f Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?
N.K.: Our first goal is to help
homeowners regain their dignity by
N.K.: Change of this type is always
dropping the shame and finding their voice
painful, but I feel it would be a good move.
to talk about the issue. Then through
When I started in real estate 35 years ago,
education of what is actually going on
Fannie and Freddie were small players in
behind the Wall Street curtain, to start
the marketplace and served a good purpose.
making smarter and proactive financial
The majority of loans written were
decisions. We don’t tell folks what to do but conventional, wraps and contracts. These
give them knowledge and resources so they
were products that could not be
can decide what is best for their families.
manipulated into the disaster we have today.
Another goal is to create a sense of "
People were buying, selling, trading and
community when people feel isolated and
exchanging real equities. It was a solid and
lost.
.sustainable marketplace. Real estate agents
had to have a lot more knowledge to put
J.Z.: How does understanding the cause of
the foreclosure crisis help people navigate their together a transaction. We weren’t just
listing and selling real estate, we solved
way through it? What actions are people
problems and brought value to the market
taking as a result?
N.K.: When people realize that they are
not the dead beats that created this melt
down, they can regain dignity and start
rebuilding their lives. The Wall Street
bankers thât made trillions of dollars off
these dirty loans are now siphoning trillions
from our treasury (in the form of) future
taxpayer dollars. I have seen estimates of
$13 trillion to $16 trillion to bail out these
J.Z.: There’s a push to do away with the
Home Affordable Modification Program, or
HAMP Act. Given its performance record, do
you think that would be the right thing to do?
N.K.: Absolutely. Less than 1 percent of
those who have applied have actually
received a permanent modification. The
See FORECLOSURE, page 5
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Cai Rooty says thank you to the great folks
who donated warm coats a n d rain gear fo r
vendors. I t makes a world o f difference!