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Occupy Wall Street and other housing activists are heading to neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosure Tuesday to protest the mistreatment of homeowners by mortgage lenders.

Occupy Our Homes said it has scheduled a day of protests, with events scheduled in 25 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.

Among the actions expected to occur is so-called foreclosure defense, where protestors try to stop police from evicting residents of homes that are being foreclosed upon.

Protestors in New York are expected to march to Brooklyn's East New York neighborhood, an area that has been hit hard by foreclosure. The demonstration, which will be led by New York Communities for Change (NYCC), will end with the protestors occupying a foreclosed home that has been vacant for several years.

Max Rameau, an organizer with Take Back the Land, said his organization has been taking these actions for years but it has gotten a boost from Occupy Wall Street. He expects a large turnout tomorrow.

"We think it's going to be huge because of the energy of Occupy Wall Street," he said. "The size and scope will be considerably bigger because of that." http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/05/real_estate/occupy_wall_street/index.h
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The nation’s biggest banks and mortgage lenders have steadily amassed real estate empires, acquiring a glut of foreclosed homes that threatens to deepen the housing slump and create a further drag on the economic recovery.

All told, they own more than 872,000 homes as a result of the groundswell in foreclosures, almost twice as many as when the financial crisis began in 2007, according to RealtyTrac, a real estate data provider. In addition, they are in the process of foreclosing on an additional one million homes and are poised to take possession of several million more in the years ahead.

Five years after the housing market started teetering, economists now worry that the rise in lender-owned homes could create another vicious circle, in which the growing inventory of distressed property further depresses home values and leads to even more distressed sales. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/business/economy/23glut.html?pagewan
ted=all other words, the "owner" ain't gonna come around and doesn't give a SHIT about the abandoned homes. Nor will they sell the homes so that anyone else can own them.

Occupy is trying to bring attention to this situation; I don't see anyone else doing so. Like I said, I recognize your desperate need to find SOMETHING, anything, negative to point out about Occupy, but I'm afraid you failed pretty miserably. Wanna try again?

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Occupiers may have been evicted from camps in public parks, but the civil disobedience continues. Protestors have moved toward occupation of government offices and homes of families facing foreclosure.

On Tuesday, Occupy DC protesters filled Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office and hallway, expressing dissatisfaction about Congress’s refusal to adopt legislation to create jobs. There were protesters at the offices of Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rep. Eric Cantor as well..

Across the country, occupiers are locking arms around homes to prevent eviction.

Occupy Wall Street, New Bottom Line, Take Back the Land, and other groups participated in the nationwide “Occupy Our Homes” day of action on Dec. 6. The campaign is designed to defend families threatened by foreclosure and put needy people in empty bank-owned homes.

Last week, Occupy L.A. activists showed up to protest a foreclosure auction outside the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Norwalk. They booed as the auctioneer led the bidding and chanted “Shame on you.”

In October, a total of 77,733 U.S. properties entered the foreclosure process by receiving a notice of default, a 10% increase from the previous month. Lenders repossessed a total of 67,624 homes, a 4% increase from September, according to the L.A. Times.

Celia Chen, a housing analyst for Moody’s Economy.com, predicted a rise in distressed home sales “within the next couple quarters, or next several months.”

Four California cities in the north and Central Valley topped Las Vegas, which had previously led the nation’s foreclosures.

In a joint news conference on Tuesday, California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris and Nevada Atty. Gen. Catherine Cortez Masto said their offices would work together to share litigation strategies and investigate mortgage servicers believed to have committed foreclosure fraud.

The move is in line with a growing number of attorney generals nationwide who are opening independent probes into the mortgage business. Last week, Massachusetts officials announced the state is suing the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers over alleged foreclosure illegalities, the first such suit to be filed by a state.

Harris has opened a number of her own probes and has subpoenaed information from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of a wide-ranging inquiry. Bank of America, its mortgage arm Countrywide Financial, and CitiBank are at the top of the list.

The pressure on mortgage lenders is slowly beginning to work. Bank of America has announced a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures, which went into effect on Dec. 3.. The decision comes amid revelations that the banking industry had used “robo-signers,” people who sign hundreds of documents a day without reviewing their contents, when foreclosing on homes. The moratorium includes sales of foreclosed property.

PNC Financial Services Group Inc. is temporarily suspending foreclosures and evictions in 23 states for a month until it can review whether documents submitted to courts complied with state laws.

resident Barack Obama recently refused to sign proposed legislation that would have made it more difficult for homeowners to challenge documents in a foreclosure.

The Senate Banking Committee will hold hearings after next month’s elections to look into allegations that the nation’s largest lenders have improperly foreclosed on struggling borrowers.

On Wednesday, former Pres. Bill Clinton told the cast of “The View” that “until we get rid of this mortgage crisis, folks, we’re not going back to full time employment.” On an optimistic note, he added that America still has advantages over the rest of the world.

“We still have the biggest economy. We still have a younger workforce than Japan and Europe. Everyone who has bet against America has lost money.” http://www.inglewoodtodaynews.com/?p=4134 people keep up the pressure, maybe we can make headway. Certainly our "representatives" won't do things on their own, so it can't hurt to try.