People are Resisting Foreclosure

Courts, Sit-ins, and Squatting Are Being Used By Homeowners

Feb 28, 2009 Jon Pike

In earlier eras of American history, people resisted bank foreclosures on their homes with armed, and often violent resistance. Today’s resistance to foreclosure is not being met with weapons, but with technology. The Internet is letting people know that they’re not helpless in the face of foreclosure, and that a variety of means of resistance, from individual to collective, are but a mouse click away. People are using the courts and more direct means to resist foreclosure.

An Individual Strategy-Produce the Note

Unlike foreclosures in an earlier time, it’s unlikely in today’s environment of the securitized mortgage that the note stating how much money is owed has only been in one entity’s hands. Mortgages have been repackaged and resold so many times that finding exactly where the note is takes time; time that can be used to the advantage of people who are facing foreclosure. What some people have been doing is going into court and asking the bank seeking foreclosure to produce the note, or proof that the payments are in arrears and that people can have their property foreclosed. When no such not has been properly produced, judges have been known to throw the foreclosure case out. But people are also taking collective action against foreclosure and finding some safety in numbers.

Collective Action against Foreclosure

Some traditional strategies of direct action are proving to be effective in the battle against foreclosures: sit-ins and squatting.

• Some community organizing groups help round-up others to help those facing foreclosure and go to the lenders to stage sit-ins. Madeline Talbott, a community organizer in the Chicago area says, "Sitting in works. It gets results."

• The group much maligned by conservatives, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, as launched a Home-Defender campaign. The campaign helps people squat, or illegally occupy their foreclosed homes until there is a comprehensive reform movement to help people who have had their homes foreclosed.

Community organizers say they are trying to get people out of the mindset that foreclosure is an individual problem over which people should be ashamed. They say that direct action, and individual action can help make this more of a public issue that needs a broader resolution.

Whether people take individual action, such as using the legal system to buy, or organize collectively to force the hand of lenders who are eager to foreclose, such tactics are putting foreclosure into the public sphere and onto the Internet. People are learning that they are not alone.