On Friday at noon, about 25 people stood outside the Bank of America Plaza building, at the corner of 8th and Market streets in downtown St. Louis, “summoning” bank officials to a town hall meeting on March 5.
Chanting, “Bank of America, bad for America!” the protesters said the people of St. Louis are tired of the bailed-out banks foreclosing their homes – especially while they are receiving federal funds to provide people with mortgage relief.
The grassroots organization, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, organized the rally to get the community’s support in requesting the bank’s presence at the “People’s Hearing” meeting to be held 1 p.m. Saturday, March 5 at St. Francis Xavier College Church, 3628 Lindell Blvd.
The ideal outcome would be a moratorium on foreclosures until a more just process is put in place, said William Taylor of MORE.
“We are coming together to let the banks know that we will not sit idly by while they destroy our communities,” Taylor said.
Bank of America representatives did not return the St. Louis American’s phone calls.
The same afternoon, the group rallied in front of Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster’s office and requested that Koster attend the meeting. The head of the consumer division, Doug Ommen, plans to attend, a spokeswoman said.
Organizers asked Koster to hold the banks accountable to their bail-out agreements. One of the bail-out conditions was to give Americans mortgage relief through loan modification programs required by federal law.
A loan modification is when a person’s existing lender modifies the current mortgage to make the mortgage more affordable.
This year, Koster’s office has received more than 1,000 complaints about mortgages and foreclosures – many relating to loan-modification attempts. The impact on homeowners, workers and taxpayers has been tragic, said Nanci Gonder, press secretary for the attorney general’s office.
“The attorney general must continue to push for accountability for those contributing to this situation and for honesty in the processes designed to resolve the crisis,” Gonder said.
Alonso Adams, a father of four, entered into Chase’s loan modification program when his real estate business started “tanking” in 2007, he said. Adams built a home in Florissant when he got out of the military. Yet when the real estate market crashed, Adams started using his savings of $50,000 to pay for his mortgage. It wasn’t enough, he said.
In January 2008, Adams applied to Chase, who told him his application would take 90 days to process. Yet over the course of two years, Chase made Adams resend his paperwork six times before it finally sold his mortgage to another bank and threw his home into foreclosure in the process. The new bank then foreclosed his home and evicted him and his family on Oct. 24, 2010. Adams is one of many who had detrimental experiences with the banks’ faulty and deceiving loan modification programs, MORE organizers said.
Adams said that President Obama’s “making homes affordable” program is federally funded, but the federal government is not holding these banks accountable.
“There is no accountability on the banks, but the banks are holding the people accountable – even though we’ve done everything that we’ve been asked to do,” Adams said.
“The problem is that there are so many people going through the same thing.”
U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay Jr. filed a congressional inquiry on behalf of Adams, but Chase said that because they no longer hold Adams’ mortgage, they will not provide a statement.
“We are tired of standing by and watching as banks foreclose on people in mass,” said Mary Boehm, a white homeowner facing foreclosure.
When Boehm’s husband lost his job in 2009, the couple applied to Bank of America’s loan modification program.
Although they made all their payments, in December the bank representative told the Boehms that they were starting foreclosure procedures on their home.
On Dec. 20, the Boehms and about 30 others protested the Bank of America building in downtown Clayton, and six protesters were arrested.
“As more and more people lose their homes, our entire community suffers,” Mary said. “We have enough vacant houses in St. Louis; we don’t need any more.”
For more information about the March 5 meeting, call the MORE office at 314-862-2249.
