Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ken Maher on August 15, 2011 at 1:16pm

Margy, wasn't the Emily Good to-do related to the Ravenwood eviction and neighbor's arrest?

Also, during my brief stint on the executive committee of the 19th Ward Community Association, my effort to revive the long-dormant housing committee were greeted with concern that we want to make sure that we get only the right people on the committee. When my schedule forced me to resign in early July, I forwarded, to the executive committee, the names of two people who'd already expressed interest in finding out more about the work of the housing committee. One of them, who meets at least once a year with Bernanke and other major financial players, works for a local nonprofit that helps people buy and keep affordable housing. The other is a local college professor whose wife is a colleague of my wife's at Nazareth College. I hope these two are considered the "right people" that we're looking for and that others will step forward to join them.

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Permalink Reply by Margy Meath on August 15, 2011 at 6:27pm

Ken-

most of the discussion here has been about Emily's arrest after she video taped the police who had stopped a driver in front of/near her home. Her recording of that event went 'viral' and it was the center of much discussion at the June "thurston street watch meeting". If my memory is correct, Emily might also have been part of the group of people arrested at the Ravenwood eviction but that has not been the subject of the 'to-do".

re: the housing committee - I sure as heck hope that anyone who wants to volunteer to help out is welcomed and encouraged to do so! The "right people", in my mind, are the people who have the will, energy and commitment to DO SOMETHING that is positive and productive for the neighborhood! The "right people" might also include people with differing opinions and ideas but that's part of what work groups/committee's work out together. The 19th Ward is filled with talented, passionate people - finding ways to bring them together seems to be one of our biggest challenges!

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Permalink Reply by Ken Maher on August 16, 2011 at 10:26am

Thanks for the clarification about Emily Good. I think she was one of the people arrested on Ravenwood, and I must have been mixing up the two events.

 

And I totally agree with you about the "right people." Thanks again.

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Permalink Reply by DeWain Feller on August 16, 2011 at 10:15pm

The launch of the Housing Committee has been delayed by the gap between our office managers (which has tapped out or volunteer resources).  Once our new office manager starts in September, we will be able to focus on getting the Housing Committee reactivated.  The delay had nothing to do with finding the "right people".  It had to do with the schedules of the remaining members of the Executive Committee.

We do want to make sure that we define what the role of the committee will be, and I strongly believe that we will have more than our handsful with working on code violations and housing preservation issues.  The issue of forclosures is largely and marco economic issue that is well beyond the scope of a volunteer neighborhood group.  We certainly can see if there is a role for the 19th WCA, but I don't want the scope of the committee to get too expansive just as we are trying to launch this major effort.

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Permalink Reply by DeWain Feller on August 16, 2011 at 10:59pm

The incident of the parking enforcement is *not* a clear case of harassment.  The police have stated that this was part of the regular enforcement that the Corn Hill Neighborhood Association asked for during the Thursday summer concerts at the lot by the Court Exchange Building (which result in a lot of illegal parking in Corn Hill).

Whether there was an element of harassment added in addition to the regular enforcement is up to the review process to decide.  We cannot allow people to make inflammatory anti-police comments, and we need to give the RPD the due process that we expect from them.

It is also important to note that enforcement of the law is not harassment.  If one does not want to get a ticket, then one should not break a parking law.  I would like to see more enforcement of parking problems in the 19th Ward (especially on Thurston), and it is essential that the neighborhood support the RPD on it.

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Permalink Reply by Louise Wu on August 14, 2011 at 6:08pm

It is difficult to see the forest for the trees sometimes.  Conventional wisdom would dictate that these folks would have been fine if they'd just paid their bills.  If that's all there was to the issue, then it is doubtful that so many community members would be involved in stopping the in justice of what's happening.   The sad fact is that the banks holding the mortgages participated in fraudulent loan and investment schemes which became insolvent and had to be bailed out by the taxpayers with billions of dollars.  The understanding was that in return for themselves being bailed out for not being able to meet their obligations, they would re-negotiate the mortgages and keep people in their houses.  Instead what happened is that the banks foreclosed on record numbers of properties in order to receive the insurance on the houses.  With these homeowners and mortgage holders, it is well known and documented that the banks would not accept payments or communicate with them.   My neighbor on Ravenwood had the means to pay her mortgage and retained two private attorneys from the beginning that the problems started with the bank and the now infamous Countrywide, after her husband died without a will and they returned her payments because her name was not yet on the deed.  She did as much to rectify the situation immediately and took the steps any of us would.  But her two attorneys could not get anywhere with the insolvent Countrywide and then Fannie Mae.  To make matters worse, Fannie Mae was employing the now legendary Stephen J. Baum esq. of foreclosure factory robo-signing fame.  His firm in Buffalo, which makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues by doing high volumes of foreclosure litigation in NY state, also uses the stonewalling tactic of not communicating with the homeowners.  Indeed they did not talk with my neighbor until she was in the national press and the Center for Constitutional Rights in NY city was calling them on her behalf.  So the kind of advocacy she's receiving at the moment is the only thing that has gotten her anywhere.  The people in the press conference video may have been upset about what the police did on Appleton.  That is their prerogative.  But there is nothing at all unreasonable about asking the police and city marshal to reconsider their level of involvement in these issues considering the scope and scale of the fraud taking place.  The lady on Appleton's case is even worse because she never received any summons to come to court for an eviction hearing.  So there was no due process.  This is a complex issue.  That is certain.  But because Rochester is being exploited heavily by these banks and unscrupulous law firms with these unlawful evictions (we have over half the number of evictions per year of a city the size of Boston), it is doubtful that people are going to quiet down about it any time soon.  At the rate these foreclosures are going, many will be made homeless unnecessarily, and our neighborhoods will look like the abandoned sections of Detroit.  It's had to believe that with an understanding of the situation, that anyone in the neighborhood would want this to continue.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Sweetland on August 15, 2011 at 12:30am

I was not aware of some of this.  But it is unreasonable to ask the police and city marshall not to do their jobs.  They do not have a choice. An unfortunate situation. 

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Permalink Reply by Louise Wu on August 15, 2011 at 6:34am

That's okay Mark. We'll probably have to agree to disagree about the role of the police and the marshal in these evictions.  I never said they shouldn't do their jobs, not that the polices' job should ever involve throwing a homeowner around in a non-criminal civil dispute about property.  I simply said that the police and the marshal need to find out if they have become complicit in a large scale fraud, and if it is still the right thing to enforce court orders that are the result of fraudulent legal filings, or no filings at all in Ms Henry's case on Appleton.  Other courts in NY State no longer allow the robo-signing lawyer, Steven J. Baum, to practice law.  The law journals record that he has been dismissed in court downstate "with extreme prejudice," which mean's don't ever come into this court again.  The next step after that would be criminal proceedings against the law firm doing all these questionable evictions.   Which is exactly what's happening.  Lawyer Baum has two class action suits, a RICO anti-raceteering case, and the new attorney general after him.  The good news is that Chief Sheppard may be getting the message about having his men on the wrong end of this, and mounting liability because of it.  It also appears that the the city marshal, Sande Macaluso, is looking for a new job, so he may also see that he is on the wrong end of the issue enforcing court orders that are ill conceived.

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Permalink Reply by John Boutet on August 15, 2011 at 5:19am

Louise,

Take a look at the Using Permalinks tutorial I put together.  The information you presented in three locations today covers a lot of interesting information but by the time I was reading it for third time I was only looking to see if any new information had been added.  This would have been a perfect application for Permalinks.

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Permalink Reply by Louise Wu on August 15, 2011 at 7:16am

Totally sorry about that.  I'll read the tutorial.  The post just didn't end up where I wanted it to go.  Sorry about the spam.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Maher on August 15, 2011 at 7:36am

That's great, John. Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Louise Wu on August 16, 2011 at 7:09am

There is some good news in the Ravenwood eviction story.  My neighbor Cathy Lennon has received a stay of eviction and reason to show cause from supreme court judge Anne marie Taddeo.  Cathy did this without any local legal representation, because Empire Justice, and most dramatically, Rochester Legal Aid this past Friday, 20 minutes before she was to be in court, turned her case down (Legal Aid led her to believe for a week prior to this that she would be represented by them) and left her high and dry without representation at that appearance.  Shameful.  Anyone who seeks these services needs to use caution.  The court giving her the eviction stay is a higher court than that of city court of judge Castro, who issued the current order of eviction last Friday to take effect tomorrow (Wednesday 8/16).  Now, hopefully, the city marshal and the police will not throw her out of her house before she is heard by Judge Taddeo.  Once the court order for eviction is in effect on Wednesday, the marshal and the police have the discretion of taking up to 30 days afterward to carry out the order.  Many here on this listserv have said these things need to be worked out in court without bedlam in the street. I really hope the police and the marshal get that and allow Cathy to go unmolested to supreme court.  

 

Cathy Lennon has really been through enough.  Before the foreclosure on the house, a former HUD property and loss to the community that she and her husband fixed up together, she nursed him there as he was dying of brain cancer.  Her daughters and grand kids lived there with her, but now have all been scattered and some made homeless.  Cathy and her kids are loved and respected by everyone on the block.  She even took action to get a drug dealer moved out of a rental property next door to her, making the street safer for all of us.  Then she had to go through this horrible fraudulent foreclosure that her own private lawyers couldn't do anything to stop.    She has built up a lot of equity in her house and has always had the ability to make her payments.  The bank that wants the insurance on the foreclosure to offset their toxic balance sheets despite being bailed out by taxpayers for their sketchy speculating, the robo-signing law firm that makes hundreds of millions a year funneling thousands of fraudulent foreclosures through our courts, and  the real estate company that scoops up REO foreclosure properties for a fraction of what they are worth, all have no incentive to do anything other than to keep steamrollering my neighbor Cathy and others like her.  They wouldn't communicate with her or her lawyers.  And they returned her mortgage payments because the deed was still in her husband's name.  But she's going to keep fighting because the house belongs to her.  And she knows that what the banks, law firms, and real estate companies are doing to people is well documented in the national press, with more people coming forward in Rochester every day, like Virginia Henry on Appleton, to say what happened to them.   Hopefully, the police will understand the magnitude of the fraud going on here and stop backing it up by uncritically throwing decent hardworking people who pay their mortgages out on the street.

 

 Virginia Henry had paid the entire note on her house, but they took it anyway!  Virginia is a hardworking civil servant who is also a good neighbor.  Virginia's place was a gutted HUD property that she bought outright and fixed up two years ago.  But the financial institution that was supposed to complete her sale never did it.  She has a legal deed with her name on it and no idea where they went with her money.  The prior owner was foreclosed on, and she was thrown out on the street without a court summons or due process of any kind.  There is something clearly VERY wrong here.  Folks who lived in the Ward during redlining know that huge real estate frauds and predation are indeed possible.  History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but similar things do arise.  The neighborhood stood up to that and they are standing up to this current fraud as well.     

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