Under Foreclosures Crisis People Try Not to Lose Their Properties

Under the conditions of the global crisis and the foreclosures crisis in the USA, people are trying not to lose their properties, or if they lose them, they are trying to get them back. Here is how Americans protect their homes. Instead of packing and leaving the keys of their houses to the banks, Americans started to protest.





Whereas the Obama government has launched a vast plan for the recovery of the financial system, some organizations have launched a campaign in order to stop banks when they want to apply foreclosure on the houses of Americans who cannot face debts any more.





The association of a community organization for an immediate reform - ACORN, a group including members of minorities in the USA and people whose income is low has inaugurated this campaign on the 13 February, in a church in Brooklyn. Using the phone and internet sites, the members of the association have managed to establish contact between families threatened by foreclosure and voluntaries who have been willing to help them with the bank applies foreclosure or when it has already applied it and houses must be repossessed.





The ACORN organization has been founded in the context in which, at the beginning of the foreclosure crisis nobody thought that homeowners got into trouble on his or her own. Nobody thought to blame for what is going on in the world those families who have chosen to live a luxury life, without actually affording it.





While foreclosures have extended, people started to blame on the financial institutions, which have offered generous loans and then have billions of dollars as help from the state. In this context, for a few months, Americans who are convinced that they have been ignored by the state start protesting. Therefore, they want their houses back, not repossession.





The first situations when they were revolted were at the end of 2008. In October, a woman in San Diego tied herself to the balcony of her property, after the bank where she had mortgage credit refused to renegotiate the conditions of the loan. Her neighbors helped her as well as ACORN representatives who formed a human barrier and stopped authorities to leave that woman without her house.





In other states, sheriffs had to take measures. In Illinois, for example the sheriff Thomas J. Dart hired a lawyer to study all the foreclosure orders and to protect all the people who kept paying rents after the banks have foreclosed their houses. The ACORN strategy consists in creating solidarity networks, which have as goal to involve the neighbors of a homeowner threatened by a bank with foreclosure.





The campaign, called "Home Protectors" has attracted more than 500 participants at meetings organized in New York and in other five states. To continue with, homes can be given back before they are sold to a new owner if current owners take any possible measure in order to pay all their debts.





Overall, if people had been more united, this foreclosure crisis would not have reached such intensity, but there is still hope...