street roots
June 7, 2013
Comics and causes collide in
foreclosure resistance poster
BY JAKE THOMAS
S T A F F W R IT E R
now Your City is a civic engagement
group that wants you to — well —
know your city.
But not in the conventional, boring
pamphlet sort of way.
Formerly the Dill Pickle Club, the
nonprofit seeks to educate the public
through tours, colorful lectures, publications
and other programs.
Now it has a message for distressed
homeowners facing foreclosure: “Don’t Move
Out!” And Know Your City is also trying a
new way to communicate this message: a
comic.
As Oregon continues to struggle with the
fallout of the housing collapse, and as
legislative efforts have produced limited
success in addressing the crisis, Know Your
City saw an opportunity to educate. The
organization has partnered with the
economic justice group We Are Oregon to
produce a fold-out poster that tells the story
in graphic format of how the housing bubble
collapsed, how the banks and the
government have failed to solve the problem
and what homeowners are doing to resist.
“I think it’s a really engaging way to tell a
story,” says Marc Moscato, Executive
Director of Know Your City. “People are
drawn to comics, whether it’s the Sunday
funnies or something more heavy. It draws
people in it by combining images and words,
and it’s not this giant
dissertation.”
With funding from
Sappi Fine Paper’s
K
JO
Froits o u r p o in t o f wiew, th is
p ro je c t was about te llin g the
Ideas T h a t M a tte r
grant program, the two
organizations have
stories of fam ilies a a i
produced a two-sided
encoarag h t f others
poster in English and
Spanish that tells the
W E A R E O REG O N
stories of homeowners
resisting foreclosure
interwoven with the
public policy aspects of
the housing collapse.
For the poster, We Are Oregon provided
much of the content from working with
distressed homeowners. For the visual
component, . KYC recruited Jesse Reklaw, the
creator of the nationally syndicated comic
strip “Slow Wave” and the author of several
graphic novels.
“It’s hard to make something that large
and-detailed without getting lost in it, so it
was helpful to work out the small panels
first, then think of an overall composition
and reading order,” said Reklaw, who wanted
the poster to speak to individuals, in
foreclosure or not, and draw them in to learn
more.
The comic begins in fall of 2008 when
banks began failing from risky behavior. It
then goes on to tell the three real-life stories
of homeowners facing foreclosure and the
challenges they face, including the billions of
dollars in lost wealth homeowners across the
country have experienced. The poster also
delves into how banks make gestures to help
homeowners, but are eagerly taking steps to
foreclose and sell the property. The
conclusion of the comic urges distressed
homeowners to not move, and, instead, to
resist eviction, like Alicia Jackson, a
homeowner facing eviction who has had
several public incidents where she has
refused to move out of her Northeast
Portland home.
“All the spirit and the language is from the
families, and we inserted the stuff about the
big banks and the systemic failures,” said
Kari Koch, spokesperson for We Are
Oregon.“From our point of view, this project
was about telling the stories of families and
encouraging others.”
Both organizations began
distributing the comic in December
of last year. Moscato’s group sent
copies of it to local social service
providers, in addition to then-
Housing Commissioner Nick Fish.
Koch said her organization uses it
for educational purposes and to
encourage other homeowners to
resist eviction.
And organizations like
Koch’s still have plenty of
work. Because although there
is some positive news in the
housing market — prices are
returning to pre-crash levels
— some homeowners are
still struggling with
lingering effects of the
housing bust.
In Oregon, 5.2 percent
of all homes are 90 days
in delinquency, with
about 4 percent for the
Portland area, which is
lower than the
national average of 6.1
percent. Statewide,
distressed sales made up 22.9 percent
of total sales, a nearly 30 percent increase
from last year. That number was 22.6
percent for the Portland area, also up by
nearly 30 percent from last year. Nationally,
that number was 21.8 percent.
Last year, foreclosure activity dropped
dramatically across the state, according to
numbers from RealtyTrac, a company that
Angela Martin, executive director of
Economic Fairness Oregon, says the bill has
a big loophole that could undermine its
effectiveness.
track s fo reclo su re activity. B etw een Ju n e and
“T h e b alan ce is o ften strik in g a line th a t
July of 2012, foreclosures dropped from
1,669 to 961.
The reason for this drop was because of a
court ruling that undermined a mechanism
real estate companies relied on for transfers,
as well as a new foreclosure mediation
program going into effect that banks
avoided, said Daren Blomquist, vice
president at RealtyTrac.
The Oregon Legislature recently passed a
bill meant to improve bank engagement in
the foreclosure mediation program. But
legislators may have left another big
loophole in the program.
Last year, lawmakers set up the program
aimed at keeping people in their homes
following a landmark $25 billion settlement
between 49 state attorneys general and the
country’s five largest loan services over
charges that the financial institutions
launched a wave of dubious foreclosures
across the country. Oregon used $7.6 million
of its $30 million share of the money to set
up a program meant to help troubled
homeowners and their lenders strike a deal
and stave off foreclosure. The program
required any homeowner faced with a non
judicial foreclosure (a foreclosure without
court supervision) to request mediation with
his or her lender.
Officials at the Oregon Justice
Department, which oversees the program,
expected it to produce thousands of modified
mortgages. According to numbers from the
department, the program produced a total of
14 mortgages that were modified through
mediation out of 341 requests for mediation.
Two of these mortgages involved a short
sale, which often involves the homeowner
losing money.
The bill aimed at reforming the mortgage
mediation program has passed both houses
of the Oregon Legislature. The legislation
adds the mediation requirements for judicial
foreclosures and also gives the Oregon
Department of Justice the authority to crack
down on lenders that thumb their nose at
the law.
excludes the good financial service providers
from regulation while capturing the bad
financial regulators,” said Martin.
According to Martin, the bill was written
in a way that attempts to give smaller banks
and credit unions a break from the bill’s
requirements, presumably because they are
conducting fewer foreclosures and because
borrowers are more likely to be able to work
out an agreement without going through the
red tape associated with larger banks.
Under the bill, financial institutions that
launched fewer than 175 foreclosures in the
prior year are exempt from the mediation
requirements.
The bill doesn’t keep pace with changes in
the market, Martin says. Financial
institutions often sell each other debt, so in
a short period of time a company that owned
few or no mortgages could acquire a large
portfolio but be exempt from mediation
requirements.
For example, Martin points out that in
March, Quicken Loans Inc. announced that it
purchased about $34 billion in mortgage
servicing rights from Ally Bank, an online
bank. Ocwen Financial Corp, purchased
another $5 billion of mortgage service
rights.
Martin said that a financial institution
that’s newer or doesn’t have much of
presence in Oregon could suddenly hold a
large volume of mortgages in the state but
still be exempt from foreclosure mediation
requirements because a year ago they
initiated no foreclosures.
“What is a small mortgage servicer
yesterday is now a top 10,” she said.
Koch questions the overall effectiveness
of the program to begin with.
“This is just about mediation, it doesn’t
require the banks to do anything,” she said.
“Essentially, from our perspective, this is
toothless. It doesn’t offer any immediate
solutions.”
More information
about Know Your
City and the
foreclosure
resistance poster
is available at
knowyourcity.org.
We Are Oregon
was created by
Oregon’s SEIU
Locals 49 and 503,
to broaden the
fight on issues that
affect working-
class Oregonians
beyond the
workplace, and
into the
communities hit
hardest by the
economic crisis.
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at www.streetroots.org/volunteer.