Left News and Views

Some good news for a change.

Adam Turl explains how pressure from below persuaded the Cook County sheriff to stop putting people out of their homes.:

From http://socialistworker.org/:

BANKERS IN Chicago are angry with–of all people–Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

Dart announced October 8 that his office would no longer forcibly remove residents from foreclosed properties, essentially imposing a moratorium on any mortgage-related evictions in the third-largest city in the U.S. and a surrounding county, with a total population of 5.3 million people.

Foreclosures are expected to reach a record high of 43,000 in Cook County this year, and the sheriff’s department was expected to conduct 4,500 foreclosure-related evictions. Two thousand people are evicted from their homes every month in Cook County–as many as 500 as a result of a foreclosure.

The Cook County moratorium applies to foreclosed homes, condominiums and apartment buildings. Renters will still be evicted for reasons not related to foreclosures. Still, this is the first moratorium on such evictions in a major urban area–at least in living memory.

Dart cited the cases of renters unjustly thrown out of their
apartments as a result of the mortgage crisis–at least a third of
such foreclosure evictions affect renters, he said. “These mortgage companies only see pieces of paper, not people, and don’t care who’s in the building,” Dart said.

“Just in the past month,” he continued, “about a third of the people we were asked to evict were under very questionable circumstances. It got to the point that enough was enough.”
Dart is demanding that banks and mortgage lenders send
representatives to notify residents of impending foreclosures at
least 120 days in advance.

While renters and homeowners will sigh with relief at the moratorium, the bankers are hopping mad. The Chicago Tribune, acting as a mouthpiece for its friends in the city’s business establishment, called the moratorium “curious” and claimed that it might be “confusing” for both homeowners and banks.

The Illinois Bankers Association charged the sheriff with breaking
the law and “vigilantism,” and insisted that the moratorium “should not be tolerated.”

But it is the banks that have repeatedly broken the law. Chicago
recently passed an ordinance that gives renters at least 90 days’
notice of an impending foreclosure-related eviction. But lenders
haven’t been following the rule.

The Tribune reported that “some mortgage experts” have “suggested” the moratorium on evictions “could compound problems by making lenders reluctant to extend credit at a time when loans are already hard to get.” The president of the Illinois Mortgage Bankers Association agreed, telling reporters the moratorium “would have a significant impact, because obviously lenders would be hesitant to lend if they knew if someone defaulted, they wouldn’t be able to take the property back.”

Setting aside the question of why anyone, in the face of the current crisis, should trust anything a mortgage banker says, this argument is absurd on its face.

There is an international credit crunch underway, with banks refusing to lend to other banks and businesses, but this is because of the mountains of bad debts these banks have run up over years, mostly on immense speculative investments in obscure financial markets. The idea that a few thousand people getting to stay in their homes would make a dent in this crisis is ridiculous.

More to the point, these banks just got an immense bailout for the crisis they created in the first place. Why should there be no break at all for working-class homeowners and renters?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

No reason at all except for bankers’ greed.

Read the complete story at:

http://socialistworker.org/2008/10/10/chicago-sheriff-stops-eviction