CNNGood on him. Especially the part about taxpayers having to fund their investigative work for them. And get the heartless corporate bank response:He said many of the evictions involve renters who are paying their rent on time but are being thrown out because the landlord has fallen behind on mortgage payments.
Mortgage companies are supposed to identify a building's occupants before asking for an eviction, but sheriff's deputies routinely find that the mortgage companies have not done so, he said.
"These mortgage companies only see pieces of paper, not people, and don't care who's in the building," Dart said. "They simply want their money and don't care who gets hurt along the way.
"On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We're not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We're just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today."
What we have here is a budding example of fascism returning to America. When innocent people -- who have done nothing wrong except rent from someone financially insolvent -- are thrown to the street without warning there is something wrong with our country.The Illinois Bankers Association opposed the plan, saying that Dart "was elected to uphold the law and to fulfill the legal duties of his office, which include serving eviction notices." The association said Dart could be found in contempt of court for ignoring court eviction orders.
"The reality is that by ignoring the law and his legal responsibilities, he is carrying out 'vigilantism' at the highest level of an elected official," it said. "The Illinois banking industry is working hard to help troubled homeowners in many ways, but Sheriff Dart's declaration of 'marshal law' should not be tolerated."
Furthermore, where are the cries from the Conservative Christians, the partners of the Corporate American arm of the Republican Party? Why are we not hearing about the abandonment of the teaching of compassion? Why are they not up in arms about an obviously overt, unjust, and heartless act of greed? Is it possible that these God Loving Christians believe Jesus is more sympathetic to corporations than to the meek? No. Can't be. I would never expect such blatant hypocrisy from the...... OUCH!
Damn, there I go, biting my tongue again.........
Good for him. In December of last year, we were first informed by a realtor that the house we had been renting since September had been foreclosed on and sold at auction to a new bank. We had 30 days to move out. Our landlord had not only collected rent from us after the house had been sold at auction, but she disappeared and we couldn't get our deposits back. We had just put up money to move into that house, and we had no money to get into a new one. We had to borrow money from family so we wouldn't go homeless. I had a deputy come to my house at night with eviction papers. He was really nice and I could tell he felt terrible once he found out we were renters. The bank that bought it treated us like vermin.
Our landlord later filed for bankruptcy and received a discharge, officially wiping out her debt to us.
We were in the same boat. Luckily for us the owners covered themselves by taking it to court. At this point we are still here.
However, this has happened to about 50 families in this suburb alone. During the real estate feeding frenzy, greedy investors bought the houses, mostly with 0 down, and let them go into foreclosure once their "investments" lost value. They were mainly hoping to secure a short sale so they could buy back the properties at the lower appraised price, under another corporation, as if someone new was buying it. This practice is widespread throughout the San Fernando valley, I have spoke to many in our neighborhood alone.
These greedy investors are the reason why we couldn't buy a house... when we were ready, the prices skyrocketed because investors were buying them all up. In fact, when we were looking to rent a few years ago - some would even brag, saying "if you don't like this, I have 9 others you can look at."
We didn't buy at the stupid prices because, even though we are not sophisticated investors, we could look at these 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1400 square foot homes and see they were not worth over a half a million dollars! Why would a professional investor think so? At the time, people's incomes were not going up - I believe the investors had planned to do whatever they could when prices declined - damed be to the renters who are paying their mortgages.
Since when did "the American dream" become investments for those with good credit? And why will they be rewarded with tax incentives to buy foreclosures when they caused a lot of them? And, the big question, if foreclosures hurt banks so much - then why didn't they work with their buyers more?
I called the Governor's office numerous times regarding this. There is no help for renters hurt by greedy people. I think it is about time that someone like this Sheriff stood up and made it public - Renters and Victims Are Not Pieces of Paper.