Residents Versus Foreclosures
Abandoned homes and ‘For Sale’ signs dotting the landscape send shivers down the community. Elected representative are humming and hawing about finding funds to fight the menace but others in the locality are not willing to buckle under without giving a fight.
Mayors in the Chicago region consisting of 272 members recently held a meeting and came up with viable suggestions like opening web sites to connect sufferers with licensed counselors. The local officials were looking at the problem from the angle of police and fire protection. How far that would get at the root of the problem is a moot question.
The problem has now taken on national jumbo proportions with 179,600 reporting of foreclosure filings in July. It is touching not only the dispossessed but also indirectly the entire area. Overgrown lawns, pending property taxes and other ills are penetrating each level of the socio-economic structure. The municipalities should see into the matter for sake of their own interests. The least the federal department concerned with housing and urban development can do is to connect the house owners with certified help agencies and hotlines.
In this matter the village hall has an important role. Psychologically the distressed will find it more comfortable to approach the latter rather than contact an impersonal faceless mortgage broker. According to a survey more than half the suffering house owners are in such a traumatic stage that they try to act like the proverbial ostrich burying their heads, hoping that the problem will disappear.
Help however is trickling through. Some non-profit groups are making use of public buildings to hold their seminars.
All the cases cannot be generalized. Each has a specific story to tell. For instance an individual invested in a number of houses in Lakewood Grove subdivision but already ten to fifteen of them have been abandoned. In other cases house owners let out the units on rent and then hiked up the rate as soon as lenders began to put the pressure. This led to the sudden eviction of many tenants. Houses became empty with piles of garbage on the front porch giving the entire community an off colour appearance.
The first thing is not to ignore the problem but to directly contact the lender. The latte does not want the house – but wants money. Respond to negotiations and be alert about legal pitfalls taking advice from proper quarters.
