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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.