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Right rips Baltimore woman used to illustrate foreclosure crisis

February 23, 2009 at 4:59 pm 7

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By MELODY SIMMONS and FERN SHEN

     Donna Hanks’ history of trouble making house payments, ripe for the picking on public databases, hit the blogosphere over the weekend like sirloin in a piranha tank. The tart-tongued East Baltimore grandmother is firing back, meanwhile, and ACORN is defending its vetting process.

UPDATES: Hanks is arrested and charged with 4th degree burglary (Baltimore Sun 2/25/09) ACORN activist who helped Hanks break into her old house is arrested.  (Baltimore Sun 2/23/09) City Council considers bill to slow evictions (Baltimore Sun 2/24/09)

  PLUS: Video of the break-in.

 

   In an interview yesterday, Hanks recalls being puzzled that ACORN picked her, over others with a more compelling story:  ”I said, ‘Why don’t you use the lady with 47 years in her house?’ But they did me first.”

     Still, Hanks think she deserves sympathy and, though she may not have a computer to respond to her Internet critics, she had some choice words for them. “I don’t care. I’ll attack ‘em right back,” she said. “My humanitarian rights have been violated. My rights are violated. If they want to talk, they should open up their wallet and send me a gift so I can get on with my life. They are p****** me off because they are digging on me, kicking me to the curb mentally.”

Media scrum mobilized
Hanks suddenly found herself in the limelight Thursday. Her story was told in the Huffington Post, on the nationally syndicated NPR show “The Takeaway” and on local Baltimore television and radio. Reporters from WYPR, WEAA, WJZ, WMAR and others were there with cameras and notebooks Thursday, recording the moment when activists wielding bolt-cutters broke into Hanks’ old home at 315 South Ellwood near Patterson Park. In six other U.S. cities, ACORN staged the same act of civil disobedience, as part of its “Home Defenders” campaign, fighting back against what they called fraudulent foreclosures.

Everyone reported pretty much what ACORN told them, which is that Hanks lost her home to foreclosure six months ago, after the adjustable rate mortgage she took out in 2001 caused her payments to balloon to nearly $2,000 a month – well above her ability to pay on a banquet worker’s salary from a downtown hotel.

The next day, television reporters told Hanks the bank had already sold her house and the new owner was considering filing trespassing charges.

Then on Sunday, comments by a poster going by versions of the name sherryande or Sherry started popping up on many of the television websites where Hanks’ story had been told and on Michelle Malkin’s website, on The Firearms Forum site and other conservative sites. The comments bristled with details and dates allegedly showing property transactions, a previous foreclosure, a bankruptcy, court records from both sides of the docket. Accurate? Fair? Relevant? Didn’t matter, up it went.

Grist for national debate on foreclosure
People will argue about whether the facts suggest Hanks was gaming the system (Malkin) or victimized by unscrupulous lenders (ACORN), but there is definitely more material to pick over now.

In a phone interview, Hanks confirmed much of what was in the now-widespread post. Yes, she said, she bought the home in 2001 for $87,000 and then in 2005 refinanced it for $270,000.

Hanks said she used the money to pay dental bills, surgery and assorted doctor’s bills at a time when she had no money.

Yes,  Hanks said, there was an earlier foreclosure on the house in May 2006 and she filed for bankruptcy the next month and, as part of that, a payment plan was set up for the more than $10,000 she owed on her mortgage.

Hanks contests other details, including whether she was wrong on the bankruptcy papers to list her monthly salary as $1,625 (“it occasionally got that high!”) or extra income from unspecified side jobs as bringing in an additional $1,275.

“We vetted her”
ACORN officials said they still believe Donna is a victim of the foreclosure crisis and said they knew most of what was posted about her on the Internet.

“We vetted her story,” said Acorn organizer Joe Cox. “We know pretty well for a fact what happened with her loan.”

Cox said loan brokers took advantage of Hanks’ naivete.

“What was clear was they were giving her a loan that, from the second she signed it, it was going to go into foreclosure – with an adjustable interest rate, a lack of escrow and a complete over-value of the property,” Cox said. “I think that for Donna there was more information out there to have had, but she doesn’t have a law degree to read through the fine print. Like all of our victims, she thought these loan brokers shared her interest in giving her a loan they thought she was going to be able to pay them back.”

“Like a detective without a gun!”

“Naivete? That’s no excuse!” said “sherryande,” who identified herself as Sherry Anderson, of Havre de Grace, a laid-off real estate researcher with time on her hands and mad database skills.

Anderson said in a phone interview that she didn’t know Hanks, but dug into her history because the story made her angry.

“I’m just a citizen who was p***** off that I should have to pay for irresponsible behavior. I wanted to get the word out,” said Anderson, who also popped up during the election with comments about Barack Obama’s citizenship.

Drawing on the skills she acquired in her work doing real estate due diligence, Anderson said it took her about an hour and a half to pull together a dossier on Hanks property transactions, foreclosures, litigation and refinancing.

Anderson works out of her home as a consultant and said she let some of her  paying work slide yesterday to poke around the public record on one of the local ACORN activists.

“I’m like a detective without a gun!”

  • Steve Fedder

    Interesting story. Please let me know how I can get someone to lend me $270,000 on a house I bought four years before for $81,000. That’s a 100% per year appreciation rate.

    Acorn didn’t do its job before highlighting this woman – and now the case is fodder for the right. Stupidity on the left plus viciousness on the right adds up to a disaster for people who really need help.

    Here’s the real problem. Unscrupulous mortgage brokers got together with unscrupulous borrowers. The borrowers got money based on appraisals they knew were not justified. The mortgage brokers don’t care because they receive a commission but don’t hold the loan. They get paid whether or not the borrower makes any payment. For this lady to get a $270,000 mortgage, she would have needed a $60,000 annual income income. From your story, it appears she only had half that. How did she think she was going to be able to pay?

    So in the end what happens? Massive foreclosures drive property values down – even for those who did not try to scam the system. So middle class folks who were counting on the equity on their homes for retirement or to send their kids to college are left holding the bag.

    I hate to say it, but Michelle Malkin is probably more right (correct I mean) than wrong. So Acorn, which has proven itself to be quite lax in its data gathering (remember their abortive voter registration drive) strikes again.

  • Sherry

    Just for clarification – “I’m like a detective without a gun!” – this was a joking reference to my profession doing background due diligence on real estate. That sounds horrible just hanging out there.

    It’s unfortunate we can’t count on our media to give us all the information or non-profit organizations that we fund to be honest.

    If ACRON did in fact “vet” the Donna Hanks story then they knew that someone else owned that home. What about his rights?

    And what about the fact that ACRON had a strong hand in fighting to get lenders to fund loans that should have never happened. Now they ride in and want to save everyone that they “helped” get into these situations.

    What have they really accomplished? They received federal funding for both activities. Seems like a money making venture for ACORN and in my opinion they are creating victims; then they use them to get additional federal funding. Let’s face it, ACORN would cease to exist without victims.

  • http://billmill.org Bill Mill

    The best part in that video is when the ACORN dude is explaining why they’re breaking in, searches for a couple seconds, and says “because we think it’s the right thing to do”. You don’t say?

    Does ACORN believe that this woman bears any responsibility for honoring the contract that she signed? Does the new owner of the house have any rights?

    Wanton lawbreaking is not civil disobedience.

  • Lee

    It is worth thinking about how this all started. Medical Bills! Remember more than 60% of people living in poverty in Baltimore are broke because of crushing medical bills (40K+ on average) due to lack of health care coverage.

    Her house was originally only worth 87K when she bought it in 2001. It’s a very modest and reasonably priced house. She is not only employed but occasionally working a second job, but neither job has any health insurance. By 2009 she could have paid off nearly half of the original loan if she continued to work hard and was lucky enough not to get sick. But people do get sick, especially under-paid people who work all the time. So she go to see the dentist and the doctor, and she needed to pay those bills.

    How to pay those bills off? The real estate person had an offer for her, refinance, and we will give you all this money and tell everyone your house is worth more – then you can pay off all your bills and own a more valuable house. Sounds like a pretty good deal, no? That’s about as much explaining as they did in many cases.

    Then years later, the bank jacks up her monthly payment to levels she can’t afford for reasons that were never fully explained to her (except in fine print), and she’s kicked out of her very modest house despite the fact that she’s been working very hard and paying them a reasonable amount of money for a reasonable house.

    The rationalization for kicking her out is that she is not paying enough money. The fact is that the house was resold for much less than 270K, hence the new buyer won’t be paying more than she could afford to pay, however there is more money to be made on kicking her out because a new buyer generates a lot more fees when signing the contact. It’s not about being reasonable or fair, it’s about making more money. Changing the terms of repayment doesn’t generate all those fees for the title company.

    First off she wouldn’t have been so desperate for the money from the refinance if she had health insurance from her job. The Fed should have stepped up the plate here like every other civilized country a long time ago. Universal health insurance would prevent about 60% of the poverty here in Baltimore. Secondly, both the lender and the buyer are responsible for the loan that she couldn’t afford to pay. Kicking working people out of their houses does nothing to fix poverty in this country, let alone Baltimore. Rather than encouraging the lender to reclaim the house, why not encourage the lender to actually work out a reasonable agreement with the current owner of the house?

  • Lee

    In short, the job of the homeowner it to select a home that is within their means to work and pay the bank a reasonable amount of money for their house, which she was doing all along. A modest earner picked a very modest house, and even got a second job.

    The job of the lender is to make the buyer an offer that they could reasonably repay. They completely failed at this. However they are rewarded for their failure with fees generated by reselling the house each time. Foreclosures also generate fees.

    The job of the government is to guarantee the health and economic success of it’s citizens. By failing to provide accessible healthcare to citizens, in this case even people who occasionally work up to 2 jobs, such people are being driven to poverty and getting kicked out of their homes so that other people can make a few extra bucks. This is a total failure. Politicians are being rewarded for this failure by gaining political influence when supporting these failed policies.

    The working person appears to be suffering because other groups that were put together to protect her are being rewarded for their failure to do so.

  • http://slumlordwatch.wordpress.com Baltimore Slumlord Watch

    Honestly, we didn’t think Donna Hanks’ story was that extraordinary, especially given the current economic situation in Baltimore, and across the country.

    What we found to be particularly galling is that fact that Louis Beverly, the man who assisted Ms. Hanks in her break-in, is in fact someone who owns derelict property in Baltimore City. He claimed to be losing his home to foreclosure, when in fact he is losing rental property to foreclosure. He has also been cited several times for failing to maintain his properties and illegal trash dumping.

    It’s really a shame that ACORN didn’t think this one through. Instead of bringing attention to a serious problem that is currently plaguing thousands of people in Maryland, they simply made fools of themselves and reinforced the commonly-held belief that people who are in foreclosure perhaps deserve it.

  • Lee

    More info – the house was resold for 192K, which means the new monthly payment is $1,202. This is about equal to the monthly payment that ACORN and Donna Hanks wanted the bank to renegotiate her loan repayment plan to. Donna couldn’t afford to pay $2,000 a month and wanted to renegotiate to say $1,200 / month… the bank says No, boots her out and has someone else pay them $1,200 a month. There’s always more profit for the banks, title companies, real estate agents, etc. to resell because of all those transaction fees. That’s really what this is all about.

    By the way, the house is still vacant and a complete torn-apart eyesore at the edge of the park. Half the siding is ripped off the front of the house as if a tornado came though, and it’s been that way since last fall. If they don’t fix it soon I’m going to start filing complaints against the new property owner, seeing that I have to look at it every day.

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