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KingCast says it's nooses again: Milan Kohout & Boston's City Life take a stand against Bank of America, Countrywide and predatory lending in general.

By Christopher King

Barack Obama would be proud to know that folks in Boston of all Nationalities and colours are standing strong against predatory lending, even if International performance artist Milan Kohout was criminally charged and almost arrested for displaying his metaphorical nooses last year. For more on the KingCast coverage of that click here and scroll down.

The nightmare is worst for Paula Taylor. Watch the WCVB/Channel 5 video coverage of the arrests made during a 5 September 2008 protest at her Roxbury Condo. For more in-depth coverage read this Openmedia Boston piece. Taylor is a first time buyer who, inter alia, never saw a copy of her HUD before she sat down to sign it. That's a per se violation right there, trust me I've done a couple hundred residential closings in NH when I was manager of Alpha Title. Anyway, she ran late on her condo payments because the unit was cross-wired and she was paying utilities for extra units. That should have been caught during an inspection, but was not. So when Countrywide/Bank of America came to foreclose, she let them take it, standing on the following principle that we discussed this morning over a $4 breakfast -- cranberry biscuits and an almond croissant over at Whole Foods:

1. Banks knew a certain number of defaults would happen during the refi and general real estate boom through malfeasance, negligence and general hard knocks and circumstances beyond control of the buyer. Like cross-wired condos.
2. Banks made untold billions of dollars because of this boom.
3. Banks had a ethical and moral responsibility to enact some type of safeguards for this fallout because it weakens the economic infrastructure of the entire country for years.
4. Banks should allow tenants to continue to pay rent and seek buyers and accept qualified buyers who express interest in saving foreclosure.
5. Banks are contributing to the economic stratification of this country, which is all part of the plan.

City Life coordinates rallies and civic protest when banks come to foreclose. Sometimes banks get scared and fail to appear as scheduled. Sometimes people get arrested; you'll have that. We need to keep up the pressure and hope that whomever is elected this fall actually does something about this mess. In New Hampshire big business dupe and AG Kelly Ayotte allowed forgery and wire fraud in lending to occur, never did a thing.
To contact City Life:
Steve Meacham
City Life
284 Amory Street
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
617.524.3541 x310
smeacham@clvu.org

Related post: We are in a recession good buddy 10-4 breaker one-niner on that.

Full post as published by Chris King's 1st Amendment Page on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).