Impoverished Foreclosure Victims are Sans Legal Help
The impoverished foreclosure victims are sans proper legal help. More than 300,000 residential houses are being served with a foreclosure notice per month. The situation has become all the more crushing because of the lack of proper legal help for the hapless foreclosure victims.
As per the findings of a new survey conducted by Brennan Center for Justice this legal impasse has been highlighted. It read, “The nation’s massive foreclosure crisis is also, at its heart, a legal crisis.” The huge majority of the foreclosed borrowers are left to fend for themselves without legal help.
The instance of Nassau County of New York can be cited. 92% of the borrowers who are facing foreclosure because of exotic mortgage loans like sub-prime do not have any lawyer to represent them.
Legal help is vital – it makes the difference between losing and keeping the home. The lawyer can put on hold foreclosure proceeding or pressurize the lenders to make them sit at the negotiating table. The lawyer can intervene in many ways than one like putting into force consumer protection laws or nosing out violations of the law by the lenders.
The report points out two reasons for the homeowners failing to get the right kind of legal support. The first is money. This is not surprising because it is the money problem that has put them in this fix.
The Legal Services Corporation is the main agency that offers legal help for those with low income. In 1996 its budget was reduced by a third. To provide the corporation the level of funds it had got in 1981 would have necessitated an additional $753 million. Washington would not have hesitated if Goldman Sachs or any other jumbo financial body needed that kind of money. Even if it had been ten times more the cash would have been made available. But those with modest income have no influence in the corridors of power. It is little wonder then that Legal Services Corporation has become powerless to move.
The second hurdle is that intentionally the system has been structured in such a way that there are restrictions in getting legal help. There are serious limitations to the ability of homeowners of seeking legal assistance. For instance there is a bar in bringing class-action suits. Moreover they cannot make the plaintiffs pay the fees of the attorney although normally the law permits it.
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