Thursday, November 18, 2010
Family members facing foreclosure are prepared to squat in their own home
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Philadelphia Tribune article Monday, 29 November 2010 16:16 Written by Larry Miller Tribune Staff Writer Sisters Barbara Cruz, 19, left, Esther Smith, 31, center and Monica Smith were able to avoid foreclosure on their home.--ABDUL R. SULAYMAN/TRIBUNE CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
For Esther “Moya” Smith, the holiday season should be a time when she’s just planning meals and purchasing gifts, not worrying about getting evicted from her home because she couldn’t meet the mortgage payments.
Smith, 31, who has been the head of the household since her mother passed away two years ago, was left to look after her two teenage sisters, a 2-year-old nephew and a mounting pile of financial problems.
Smith story is replicated virtually in every state across the nation.
But for Smith and another Philadelphia resident Tanya Morris their homes were fortunately saved from foreclosure.
Both living with the threat of losing one’s home is a situation that is, for too many Americans, not of their own making.
Esther “Moya” Smith
Smith has said she’ll go to jail, rather than let the bank take her home on Widener Street — and she’s not alone in this effort.
Of course, the ideal outcome would be for the bank to modify her payments, but that had not happened – until this week.
After hearing of a story an anonymous donor mailed Smith a $9,100 check enough to cover her delinquent mortgage payments, as well as penalties and fines.
“It’s just all shocking. It’s so nice that somebody would come out and step forward to give that amount,” Smith told the Daily News. “I’m still like, “Whoaass! I don’t even know how to express it.”
Cheri Honkala, National Organizer for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, had vowed the family will not be removed from their home for the holidays. Honkala said it’s unconscionable for the bank not to modify her payments and they will continue to fight the foreclosure.
Honkala said the PPEHRC is a multi-ethnic, multi-generational organization with 150 chapters across the United States. She said every 13 seconds someone’s home in America goes into foreclosure.
“We are willing to go to jail over this,” Honkala said. “This family cannot be allowed to be removed from their home, especially when the resources exist to help. We shouldn’t allow banks to come into neighborhoods and empty houses. In this economy, we need to force the banks to do the right thing, which is to modify mortgages that are in danger of foreclosure. Like people did during the Great Depressions, if they board the house up, we will take the boards off and move everybody right back in.”
Smith said the last thing she ever expected to happen was to potentially have to become a squatter in her own home, which was her mother’s house for 15 years.
“My mother died in August 2008 and my youngest sister, who was 10 years old at the time, was having problems at school,” Smith said. “I missed a lot of time from work trying to help her and got fired.”
Without a steady income, Smith fell behind in her mortgage payments. She’s applied to her mortgage company, American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., for a loan modification. But her application has been denied – the reason is that her debt-to-income ratio was too high. Basically her income is too low and in an America that is just beginning to slowly recover from the economic crisis, Smith is worried she and her family could end up on the street.
“The bank let me know in August of this year that I was facing foreclosure and had to be out by October,” she said. “I have nowhere to go. I’ve been asking the bank to modify the payments and right now they’re deciding if they will or not. I’m raising my younger sister; I have a 2-year-old nephew. What am I supposed to do?”
Smith has also applied to several foreclosure-assistance programs run by social service agencies. The top of the list was the city-run Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Pilot Program.
“They told her they’ve run out of money,” Honkala said. “We educate people in how to engage in non-violent civil disobedience and there’s a growing army of residents in the community rallying around this family. We’ve slowed the process, but it’s slowing an inevitable process. Our elected officials have been willing to bail out the banks — what about the people who elected them?
Right now Smith receives $316 a month in welfare. Her 19-year-old sister Barbara moved back in to help with the finances, but it’s too soon to know if the finance company will modify her payments. But she has almost $9,000 in delinquent mortgage payments and penalties.
“It’s something that could happen at any time,” Smith said, who added that her employment prospects have been improving. “I’m just hopeful at this point that this is going to get better.”
Honkala said there’s no reason for this to happen.
“Could the federal government do something significant to help Moya and other Americans in her position? Definitely. Does the political will exist to make that happen? Not really,” she said. “There should be a moratorium on foreclosures until the economy improves more. If it doesn’t, we’re going to be close to an explosion in the cities. Do we really want to see that happen?”
Fortunately for Smith an anonymous donor will keep her in her home.
Tanya Morris
While Esther Smith waits, Tanya Morris’s home is out of foreclosure. She purchased her home in the city’s Belmont section in 2007 and hasn’t worked full time since then.
“I have twin sons, both 21, but I’m not married so it’s just my income. I haven’t worked full time since I’ve been in here,” she said. Morris works as director of communications and outreach for the Energy Coordinating Agency, which assists people in weatherizing their homes and making them energy efficient.
“In early February I was sent a letter from Wells Fargo that I was delinquent in my mortgage payments and that I was facing foreclosure. But I’ve had some challenges since I got in here,” she said. “They were willing to work with me but they were a little reluctant.”
Morris met Mike Brown, a housing counselor with Northwest Counseling Services who convinced the bank to be more amenable.
“I’ll admit, I dragged my feet at first. But the day I called him was the same day that he called the bank’s representative,” Morris said. “They weren’t eager, but they followed the proper steps. It was almost like getting another mortgage all over again. They go over all your finances - it’s a lot of back and forth. Now I have a new mortgage payment at a lower interest rate. It’s a bi-weekly payment plan that’s about $100 less than what I had when I started. It’s really a lot off my mind.”
Anonymous Donor Helps Olney Woman Stay in Her Home | NBC Philadelphia* channel 10 Philadelphia
Channel 6 philadelphia
Generous reader rescues Olney woman facing foreclosure
By DANA DiFILIPPO 11/25/10
Philadelphia Daily News
difilid@phillynews.com
Esther "Moya" Smith won't be able to eat turkey Thursday. She just had two problematic molars pulled and the pain has kept her on a soft-food diet.
And her sister will spend the day at work.
But tomorrow nonetheless will be one of her happiest Thanksgivings.
After the Daily News chronicled her battle against foreclosure last week, a generous reader mailed Smith a $9,100 check - enough to cover her delinquent mortgage payments, as well as penalties and fees.
"Always stay positive. And remember, God provides," the benefactor, a Philly native now living in Dallas who wished to remain anonymous, wrote in a brief note.
Smith, 31, was overwhelmed.
"It's just all shocking. It's so nice that somebody would come out and step forward to give that amount," she said. "I'm still like: 'Whoaaa!' I don't even know how to express it."
Smith has been the reluctant head of her Olney household since her mother died two years ago, leaving her in charge of her two teenage sisters and baby nephew. Financial troubles that started with her mother's medical and funeral bills mounted until she fell seven months behind on her $645 monthly mortgage payments, prompting foreclosure.
The family, with support from the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, planned to resist the foreclosure and remain in their redbrick rowhouse on Widener Street near 3rd in the event of an eviction.
But now that might be moot.
Philippa Brown, a spokeswoman with the Texas-based American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., which holds Smith's loan, said her company would accept the check to clear the delinquency.
The company still has not decided whether to modify her loan. A decision is expected within several weeks, Brown said.
Cheri Honkala, organizer with the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, celebrated the donation but noted that countless others face similar foreclosure struggles.
"We are just absolutely thankful, especially this time of the year, that some amazing human being has stepped forward with this kind of generosity. This is the kind of world we should live in, where people take care of each other," Honkala said. "But in the meantime, we've gotten calls and e-mails from other folks facing the same crisis."
Esther's Press Conference announcing her fight to keep her home 11/18/10
Video produced by PPEHRC National Education Center member Richie Antipuna
By DANA DiFILIPPO
Philadelphia Daily News
difilid@phillynews.com 215-854-5934
THE FORECLOSURE notices have piled up, and collection agents call weekly.
Esther "Moya" Smith fears it won't be long before the bank changes the locks and boots her from the redbrick rowhouse in Olney where her mother moved the brood 15 years ago.
But she won't go. She can't go, she says.
At 31, she's the reluctant head of her household since her mother died two years ago, leaving her in charge of her two teenage sisters and baby nephew. Financial troubles that started with her mother's medical and funeral bills mounted until she fell seven months behind on mortgage payments, prompting foreclosure.
So, today, Smith, her neighbors and community activists will gather at her house on Widener Street near 3rd. They plan to stay there - camping out "for however long it takes" - to fight the foreclosure and ensure that Smith's family keeps the house.
"We are willing to go to jail. This family will not go out on the [Roosevelt] Boulevard for the holidays," said Cheri Honkala, of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. "We shouldn't allow banks to come into neighborhoods and empty buildings and create crackhouses. In this economy, they should be forced to modify [mortgages]. If they board the house up, we will take the boards off and move everybody back in."
In Philadelphia, a city with 40,000 vacant or abandoned properties, squatters are as plentiful as Wawas and water ice.
But many of today's squatters aren't the wretches and drug-addled runaways of the imagination: They're poor families, like Esther Smith and her charges, so desperate to stay together that they'll move into a blighted property - or squat in their own foreclosed home.
No one tracks the number of squatters. But homeless and anti-poverty advocates say that the unrelenting recession has kept homeless shelters full daily, forcing those without homes to bunk with family or friends, or to squat in abandoned buildings.
"It's the reality show that no one sees," Honkala said.
Homelessness in Philadelphia has risen sharply since 2000, when there were 1,175 homeless people in the city, according to Project HOME, a homeless-advocacy group that keeps a census for the city of people living in shelters and on the streets. This year, that population has grown to 1,720, Project HOME found.
"More people are losing their homes and their jobs, and we're absolutely seeing more families double up with [other] family members," said Marsha Cohen, executive director of the Homeless Advocacy Project.
Laura I. Weinbaum, Project HOME's director of public policy, added, "Anecdotally, we are seeing more people in squatting situations."
Smith never thought that she'd become a squatter in her own home.
Two years ago, she worked an overnight shift as a campus shuttle-bus driver at the University of Pennsylvania.
In August 2008, her mother died. Smith's youngest sister, Monica, then 10, quickly devolved into grief-fueled insomnia and misbehavior at school. After missing work several times to help her sister, Smith got fired, she said.
"I felt hurt, because I needed the income, but I needed even more to be at home for her," Smith said.
Smith cobbled together an income doing odd jobs in home construction, car repair and baby-sitting - anything that allowed her to focus on her sister first.
But with an inconsistent income, she soon fell behind the seven months on her $645 monthly mortgage bills.
In early summer, she applied to her mortgage company, Texas-based American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., for a loan modification. They denied her application, saying that her debt-to-income ratio was too high, meaning that she made too little money to qualify for a modification.
She also applied to several foreclosure-assistance programs run by social-service agencies, but she was told they had run out of money.
In July, she said, she started collecting $316 a month in welfare.
In August, her sister Barbara - who was living with her husband, an Army soldier stationed in Texas who will deploy to Iraq in January, and their 2-year-old son, Jovanie - moved back in with Smith to help with the bills. Smith and her sister thought that Barbara's income as a housekeeper at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, along with $200 monthly from her husband's soldier's pay, might be enough to fend off foreclosure.
But last month, Smith received her first foreclosure notice.
Since then, she's gotten calls several times a week from the company, demanding payment.
The increased pressure to pay prompted Honkala's group to champion her case.
"[Leaving the home] is not an option," Honkala said last week. "There's a growing army around her."
Honkala has plenty of experience in standoffs and sit-ins.
As founder of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, she set up tent cities for homeless people on vacant lots and led marches to raise awareness about poverty and homelessness in the early 2000s. She disappeared for a few years to help her sister and others fight foreclosure in Minnesota and to raise her son, Guillermo, now 8.
But she's back in Philadelphia and ready for battle, with her new group, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign.
The group teaches "foreclosure classes" and encourages squatting, or "homesteading" as Honkala prefers to call it, to people like Smith. Lessons include topics such as how to participate in nonviolent civil disobedience, how to prove residency in order to get utilities - even when possession of a home is illegal - and how to explain to children what's happening.
"They can call us a criminal all they want," Honkala said, "but we think we'll be upholding higher laws: laws of humanity. We are good mothers and sisters and caregivers who are going to care for our families however we have to."
In Smith's case, it's too early to tell whether today's planned sit-in will be more consciousness-raising or civil disobedience.
Philippa Brown, a spokeswoman for Smith's lienholder, American Mortgage, said her company is considering modifying Smith's $60,000 mortgage, but she wouldn't release details. The foreclosure, which is temporarily on hold until the company decides whether to alter the loan, will move forward unless Smith clears her outstanding debt, Brown said.
Smith is delinquent by about $9,000 since April; about half is mortgage payments, while the other is penalties and fees, Smith said.
Now that her little sister Monica has improved, Smith said she has applied for numerous jobs, including retail and janitorial positions, as well as jobs with SEPTA, the Philadelphia Police Department and the Philadelphia Prisons System. But she's had no luck landing anything.
One morning last week, sassy, saggy-diapered Jovanie frolicked in the family's living room, where they still keep candles lighted and glasses full of water for their mother.
"They give evolution to the spirit," Smith said.
As December approaches, Smith said she grows more depressed. Barbara, Monica and Jovanie all have December birthdays. A foreclosure and eviction, Smith noted sourly, would be lousy birthday gifts.
"The sad thing is with most of these struggles [to stave off homelessness], we've lost them," Honkala said. "This time, hopefully, there will be an angel."
Smith, sifting through old photos of her mother, smiled and agreed: "Yes. Hopefully."
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20101118_Family_members_facing_foreclosure_are_prepared_to_squat_in_their_own_home.html?cmpid=41144277 (story)
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20101118_Family_members_facing_foreclosure_are_prepared_to_squat_in_their_own_home.html?page=2&c=y (video)
To read or see more of Esther's story please checkout nov's archives
Please click link below to hear Cheri Honkalas interview
For Esther “Moya” Smith, the holiday season should be a time when she’s just planning meals and purchasing gifts, not worrying about getting evicted from her home because she couldn’t meet the mortgage payments.
Smith, 31, who has been the head of the household since her mother passed away two years ago, was left to look after her two teenage sisters, a 2-year-old nephew and a mounting pile of financial problems.
Smith story is replicated virtually in every state across the nation.
But for Smith and another Philadelphia resident Tanya Morris their homes were fortunately saved from foreclosure.
Both living with the threat of losing one’s home is a situation that is, for too many Americans, not of their own making.
Esther “Moya” Smith
Smith has said she’ll go to jail, rather than let the bank take her home on Widener Street — and she’s not alone in this effort.
Of course, the ideal outcome would be for the bank to modify her payments, but that had not happened – until this week.
After hearing of a story an anonymous donor mailed Smith a $9,100 check enough to cover her delinquent mortgage payments, as well as penalties and fines.
“It’s just all shocking. It’s so nice that somebody would come out and step forward to give that amount,” Smith told the Daily News. “I’m still like, “Whoaass! I don’t even know how to express it.”
Cheri Honkala, National Organizer for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, had vowed the family will not be removed from their home for the holidays. Honkala said it’s unconscionable for the bank not to modify her payments and they will continue to fight the foreclosure.
Honkala said the PPEHRC is a multi-ethnic, multi-generational organization with 150 chapters across the United States. She said every 13 seconds someone’s home in America goes into foreclosure.
“We are willing to go to jail over this,” Honkala said. “This family cannot be allowed to be removed from their home, especially when the resources exist to help. We shouldn’t allow banks to come into neighborhoods and empty houses. In this economy, we need to force the banks to do the right thing, which is to modify mortgages that are in danger of foreclosure. Like people did during the Great Depressions, if they board the house up, we will take the boards off and move everybody right back in.”
Smith said the last thing she ever expected to happen was to potentially have to become a squatter in her own home, which was her mother’s house for 15 years.
“My mother died in August 2008 and my youngest sister, who was 10 years old at the time, was having problems at school,” Smith said. “I missed a lot of time from work trying to help her and got fired.”
Without a steady income, Smith fell behind in her mortgage payments. She’s applied to her mortgage company, American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., for a loan modification. But her application has been denied – the reason is that her debt-to-income ratio was too high. Basically her income is too low and in an America that is just beginning to slowly recover from the economic crisis, Smith is worried she and her family could end up on the street.
“The bank let me know in August of this year that I was facing foreclosure and had to be out by October,” she said. “I have nowhere to go. I’ve been asking the bank to modify the payments and right now they’re deciding if they will or not. I’m raising my younger sister; I have a 2-year-old nephew. What am I supposed to do?”
Smith has also applied to several foreclosure-assistance programs run by social service agencies. The top of the list was the city-run Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Pilot Program.
“They told her they’ve run out of money,” Honkala said. “We educate people in how to engage in non-violent civil disobedience and there’s a growing army of residents in the community rallying around this family. We’ve slowed the process, but it’s slowing an inevitable process. Our elected officials have been willing to bail out the banks — what about the people who elected them?
Right now Smith receives $316 a month in welfare. Her 19-year-old sister Barbara moved back in to help with the finances, but it’s too soon to know if the finance company will modify her payments. But she has almost $9,000 in delinquent mortgage payments and penalties.
“It’s something that could happen at any time,” Smith said, who added that her employment prospects have been improving. “I’m just hopeful at this point that this is going to get better.”
Honkala said there’s no reason for this to happen.
“Could the federal government do something significant to help Moya and other Americans in her position? Definitely. Does the political will exist to make that happen? Not really,” she said. “There should be a moratorium on foreclosures until the economy improves more. If it doesn’t, we’re going to be close to an explosion in the cities. Do we really want to see that happen?”
Fortunately for Smith an anonymous donor will keep her in her home.
Tanya Morris
While Esther Smith waits, Tanya Morris’s home is out of foreclosure. She purchased her home in the city’s Belmont section in 2007 and hasn’t worked full time since then.
“I have twin sons, both 21, but I’m not married so it’s just my income. I haven’t worked full time since I’ve been in here,” she said. Morris works as director of communications and outreach for the Energy Coordinating Agency, which assists people in weatherizing their homes and making them energy efficient.
“In early February I was sent a letter from Wells Fargo that I was delinquent in my mortgage payments and that I was facing foreclosure. But I’ve had some challenges since I got in here,” she said. “They were willing to work with me but they were a little reluctant.”
Morris met Mike Brown, a housing counselor with Northwest Counseling Services who convinced the bank to be more amenable.
“I’ll admit, I dragged my feet at first. But the day I called him was the same day that he called the bank’s representative,” Morris said. “They weren’t eager, but they followed the proper steps. It was almost like getting another mortgage all over again. They go over all your finances - it’s a lot of back and forth. Now I have a new mortgage payment at a lower interest rate. It’s a bi-weekly payment plan that’s about $100 less than what I had when I started. It’s really a lot off my mind.”
Anonymous Donor Helps Olney Woman Stay in Her Home | NBC Philadelphia* channel 10 Philadelphia
Channel 6 philadelphia
Generous reader rescues Olney woman facing foreclosure
By DANA DiFILIPPO 11/25/10
Philadelphia Daily News
difilid@phillynews.com
Esther "Moya" Smith won't be able to eat turkey Thursday. She just had two problematic molars pulled and the pain has kept her on a soft-food diet.
And her sister will spend the day at work.
But tomorrow nonetheless will be one of her happiest Thanksgivings.
After the Daily News chronicled her battle against foreclosure last week, a generous reader mailed Smith a $9,100 check - enough to cover her delinquent mortgage payments, as well as penalties and fees.
"Always stay positive. And remember, God provides," the benefactor, a Philly native now living in Dallas who wished to remain anonymous, wrote in a brief note.
Smith, 31, was overwhelmed.
"It's just all shocking. It's so nice that somebody would come out and step forward to give that amount," she said. "I'm still like: 'Whoaaa!' I don't even know how to express it."
Smith has been the reluctant head of her Olney household since her mother died two years ago, leaving her in charge of her two teenage sisters and baby nephew. Financial troubles that started with her mother's medical and funeral bills mounted until she fell seven months behind on her $645 monthly mortgage payments, prompting foreclosure.
The family, with support from the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, planned to resist the foreclosure and remain in their redbrick rowhouse on Widener Street near 3rd in the event of an eviction.
But now that might be moot.
Philippa Brown, a spokeswoman with the Texas-based American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., which holds Smith's loan, said her company would accept the check to clear the delinquency.
The company still has not decided whether to modify her loan. A decision is expected within several weeks, Brown said.
Cheri Honkala, organizer with the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, celebrated the donation but noted that countless others face similar foreclosure struggles.
"We are just absolutely thankful, especially this time of the year, that some amazing human being has stepped forward with this kind of generosity. This is the kind of world we should live in, where people take care of each other," Honkala said. "But in the meantime, we've gotten calls and e-mails from other folks facing the same crisis."
Esther's Press Conference announcing her fight to keep her home 11/18/10
Video produced by PPEHRC National Education Center member Richie Antipuna
By DANA DiFILIPPO
Philadelphia Daily News
difilid@phillynews.com 215-854-5934
THE FORECLOSURE notices have piled up, and collection agents call weekly.
Esther "Moya" Smith fears it won't be long before the bank changes the locks and boots her from the redbrick rowhouse in Olney where her mother moved the brood 15 years ago.
But she won't go. She can't go, she says.
At 31, she's the reluctant head of her household since her mother died two years ago, leaving her in charge of her two teenage sisters and baby nephew. Financial troubles that started with her mother's medical and funeral bills mounted until she fell seven months behind on mortgage payments, prompting foreclosure.
So, today, Smith, her neighbors and community activists will gather at her house on Widener Street near 3rd. They plan to stay there - camping out "for however long it takes" - to fight the foreclosure and ensure that Smith's family keeps the house.
"We are willing to go to jail. This family will not go out on the [Roosevelt] Boulevard for the holidays," said Cheri Honkala, of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. "We shouldn't allow banks to come into neighborhoods and empty buildings and create crackhouses. In this economy, they should be forced to modify [mortgages]. If they board the house up, we will take the boards off and move everybody back in."
In Philadelphia, a city with 40,000 vacant or abandoned properties, squatters are as plentiful as Wawas and water ice.
But many of today's squatters aren't the wretches and drug-addled runaways of the imagination: They're poor families, like Esther Smith and her charges, so desperate to stay together that they'll move into a blighted property - or squat in their own foreclosed home.
No one tracks the number of squatters. But homeless and anti-poverty advocates say that the unrelenting recession has kept homeless shelters full daily, forcing those without homes to bunk with family or friends, or to squat in abandoned buildings.
"It's the reality show that no one sees," Honkala said.
Homelessness in Philadelphia has risen sharply since 2000, when there were 1,175 homeless people in the city, according to Project HOME, a homeless-advocacy group that keeps a census for the city of people living in shelters and on the streets. This year, that population has grown to 1,720, Project HOME found.
"More people are losing their homes and their jobs, and we're absolutely seeing more families double up with [other] family members," said Marsha Cohen, executive director of the Homeless Advocacy Project.
Laura I. Weinbaum, Project HOME's director of public policy, added, "Anecdotally, we are seeing more people in squatting situations."
Smith never thought that she'd become a squatter in her own home.
Two years ago, she worked an overnight shift as a campus shuttle-bus driver at the University of Pennsylvania.
In August 2008, her mother died. Smith's youngest sister, Monica, then 10, quickly devolved into grief-fueled insomnia and misbehavior at school. After missing work several times to help her sister, Smith got fired, she said.
"I felt hurt, because I needed the income, but I needed even more to be at home for her," Smith said.
Smith cobbled together an income doing odd jobs in home construction, car repair and baby-sitting - anything that allowed her to focus on her sister first.
But with an inconsistent income, she soon fell behind the seven months on her $645 monthly mortgage bills.
In early summer, she applied to her mortgage company, Texas-based American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., for a loan modification. They denied her application, saying that her debt-to-income ratio was too high, meaning that she made too little money to qualify for a modification.
She also applied to several foreclosure-assistance programs run by social-service agencies, but she was told they had run out of money.
In July, she said, she started collecting $316 a month in welfare.
In August, her sister Barbara - who was living with her husband, an Army soldier stationed in Texas who will deploy to Iraq in January, and their 2-year-old son, Jovanie - moved back in with Smith to help with the bills. Smith and her sister thought that Barbara's income as a housekeeper at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, along with $200 monthly from her husband's soldier's pay, might be enough to fend off foreclosure.
But last month, Smith received her first foreclosure notice.
Since then, she's gotten calls several times a week from the company, demanding payment.
The increased pressure to pay prompted Honkala's group to champion her case.
"[Leaving the home] is not an option," Honkala said last week. "There's a growing army around her."
Honkala has plenty of experience in standoffs and sit-ins.
As founder of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, she set up tent cities for homeless people on vacant lots and led marches to raise awareness about poverty and homelessness in the early 2000s. She disappeared for a few years to help her sister and others fight foreclosure in Minnesota and to raise her son, Guillermo, now 8.
But she's back in Philadelphia and ready for battle, with her new group, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign.
The group teaches "foreclosure classes" and encourages squatting, or "homesteading" as Honkala prefers to call it, to people like Smith. Lessons include topics such as how to participate in nonviolent civil disobedience, how to prove residency in order to get utilities - even when possession of a home is illegal - and how to explain to children what's happening.
"They can call us a criminal all they want," Honkala said, "but we think we'll be upholding higher laws: laws of humanity. We are good mothers and sisters and caregivers who are going to care for our families however we have to."
In Smith's case, it's too early to tell whether today's planned sit-in will be more consciousness-raising or civil disobedience.
Philippa Brown, a spokeswoman for Smith's lienholder, American Mortgage, said her company is considering modifying Smith's $60,000 mortgage, but she wouldn't release details. The foreclosure, which is temporarily on hold until the company decides whether to alter the loan, will move forward unless Smith clears her outstanding debt, Brown said.
Smith is delinquent by about $9,000 since April; about half is mortgage payments, while the other is penalties and fees, Smith said.
Now that her little sister Monica has improved, Smith said she has applied for numerous jobs, including retail and janitorial positions, as well as jobs with SEPTA, the Philadelphia Police Department and the Philadelphia Prisons System. But she's had no luck landing anything.
One morning last week, sassy, saggy-diapered Jovanie frolicked in the family's living room, where they still keep candles lighted and glasses full of water for their mother.
"They give evolution to the spirit," Smith said.
As December approaches, Smith said she grows more depressed. Barbara, Monica and Jovanie all have December birthdays. A foreclosure and eviction, Smith noted sourly, would be lousy birthday gifts.
"The sad thing is with most of these struggles [to stave off homelessness], we've lost them," Honkala said. "This time, hopefully, there will be an angel."
Smith, sifting through old photos of her mother, smiled and agreed: "Yes. Hopefully."
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20101118_Family_members_facing_foreclosure_are_prepared_to_squat_in_their_own_home.html?cmpid=41144277 (story)
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20101118_Family_members_facing_foreclosure_are_prepared_to_squat_in_their_own_home.html?page=2&c=y (video)
To read or see more of Esther's story please checkout nov's archives
Please click link below to hear Cheri Honkalas interview
Labels: http://www.am760.net/pages/DavidSirota.html, www.am760.net
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Foreclosure Struggle.......Faces of Resistance And Esther Smith's Family Struggle
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Faces of Resistance
A family goes into foreclosure every 13 seconds in the United States of America. This video "Faces of Resistance" takes the statement of one family in foreclosure and connects their crisis with the national housing crisis that affects every resident in this country. Members of the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, an organization led by the poor are mounting a foreclosure campaign defense using the foreclosure experience of our members. Daily we will document the steps we will take to hold onto Esther Smith’s home in hopes that other members facing foreclosure will reach out to us so that we can tie these scattered struggles together, or a family facing foreclosure can learn that they are not alone. The Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign is a part of the Zero Evictions Campaign.
Contact the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign to get involved or if you are facing foreclosure at info@ppehrc.org.
Below is the statement of Esther Smith, read by members of the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign in the video above:
My name is Esther Smith I am 31 years old. I live with my two younger sisters, Barbara Cruz, Monica Smith and my 2 year old nephew Jovanie Rivera which I am caring for. I also have a brother named Aaron Smith who is incarcerated in the State Prison in Pennsylvania. My mother Esther Ortiz, who passed away two years ago leaving us with a home in which unfortunately is not fully paid; therefore I must manage to pay the monthly mortgage as well as other expenses.
I have worked different odd jobs to pay the bills but it is nowhere near enough. We are as of today facing foreclosure and having the fear day by day to become homeless. I am currently doing all I can to pay the bills and do deal with my young grieving sisters. Due to this extreme difficulty I am under a lot of stress. The holidays are drawing closer and I am going to do all I can with the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign to keep me and my little sisters and nephew from becoming homeless.
We will fight the bank and politicians and members of PPEHRC will go to jail if they have to. My mother had worked for us so hard to have a roof over our heads. She also helped others daily in the movement to end poverty and she taught me how to be strong and fight. At 31 my life has taken a very different road. I am now having to be a mother to my sisters and having to fight foreclosure.
Please support myself and PPEHRC in this fight by following our website at economichumanrights.org.
God bless and watch over all the families facing foreclosure this holiday season.
Sincerely,
Esther Smith
Below Esther's Frustrations with the bank "American Home Mortgage Services INC."
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Friday, November 5, 2010
muhammad's story ppehrc member and student at national ppehrc education center
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THIS IS A SHORT VERSION OF A MAN WHOSE MOTHER RAISED HIM TO BE A HUSTLER,HAD HIM AND HIS LITTLE BROTHER TASTE HERION AND COCAINE IN 3RD GRADE TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.WHO NOW IS IN RECOVERY ,AND DOING NEW AND PRO ACTIVE THINGS FOR HIMSELF AND OTHERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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