"There is a crisis that has been raging through our nation’s legal system for years now. It’s a crisis that has destroyed our nation’s legal system and not only have attorneys, and the Bar associations…all of them; national, state, local…not done anything to help stop this crisis…almost all…especially the Bar associations…have been directly complicit in the crimes that have in fact decimated the very foundation upon this once great nation was built." - Attorney Matt WeidnerCoincidentally, that very same day the State Legislature of California passed the Homeowner Bill of Rights to a cheering audience.
"We have experienced a Titanic of foreclosures that is sinking the economy," said Assemblyman Mike Eng, D-Alhambra, speaking on behalf of the bill on the Assembly floor today. "The attorney general and all of you who support this bill have sent the lifeboat out to shore."
Gov. Brown did not say definitively whether he would vote for the bill, but he did issue this statement late this afternoon:
“The Homeowner Bill of Rights will prevent banks from throwing Californians out of their homes while they are trying, in good faith, to renegotiate their mortgages. This bill establishes important consumer protections that are long overdue and I commend Attorney General Kamala Harris for her determined pursuit of these changes.” - Legislature Passes Homeowner Bill of Rights - The Bay Citizen.orgI thought this was a good opportunity as any to report other good news that a study was released contradicting my earlier belief that homeowners' loan modifications were really nothing more than the banks setting up borrowers to give up their home through trickery. Turns out I was misinformed because these modifications do apparently help most borrowers avoid foreclosure.
The Center for Responsible Lending (“CRL”), a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that works to stop foreclosure during this housing crisis and protect home ownership and family wealth, in it’s June 2012 policy brief, highlighted the results of its most recent study of loan modifications and their effectiveness as a mechanism for keeping borrowers at risk of foreclosure in their homes over time.
The CRL, analyzing loan modification data for California, showed that 80 percent of borrowers that received permanent loan modifications in 2010 have remained current on their mortgage payments, and in fact only 2 percent of these borrowers have since lost their homes to foreclosure. Loan Modifications Stop Foreclosures, Study Shows - DOER ALERT! - Mandelman Matters Blog
I had heard that banks tricked homeowners into defaulting on their loan payment in the modification process in order to trigger their being foreclosed upon. Apparently that was a small percentage of homeowners who had experienced a bait and switch tactic of a few banks.
It's time for the legal profession to help reverse this disaster to help the nation recover from this crisis or continue to experience a collapse of their law firms as the parasites they've become.