Revolutionary response to home forclosure

[Dawn Meredith]

I too have found all the points in this thread extremely compelling, being pulled in both directions. My initial instinct caused me to agree with Bruce. I might just add that two wrongs do not make a right. The banks are soleless slime but I too have had the benefit over many decades of home ownership, in different locales, that I would not have been able to accomplish without a bank to lend me the money for a mortgage. As for people who get into huge homes they cannot afford and then the value drops, I have zero sympathy for them. I would love to live in a nicer neighborhood, a nicer home but I am not stuipd enough to get in over my head. A friend's mother in law did this a few years back and it is clear that in very short order my friend's family will be paying that mortgage. I would NEVER put my family in this position. In fact I missed out on many a vacation in order to get my mortgage paid off before my 60th birthday. So then I can work the next ten years and save for retirement. Lots of things in this life are not "fair". The banks are in dire need of regulation and the mess that occurred over the last two years is STILL occurring. In fact I recently learned that they are now employing a new trick: I know someone who got in over her head four years ago on a mortgatge in Boston. I warned her at the onset that she could not afford a half million dollar home. Now two years later with no martgage payments she is STILL in the home. Banks are keeping this sort of thing on the q t in order to continue to sell toxic debt. Madness. I don't agree that the banks rates are unfair. A loan at 6% seems pretty fair to me. Now credit card interest is another matter altogether. I agree that when a person loses his or her job that the bank or IRS or whomever needs to works with this person; stealing one's home is tantamount to murder as far as I am concerned. As Walt Brown so "graciously" mentioned on these pages a couple of years back, I did have some IRS problems decades back and had to fight not to lose my home. That was terrifying, but never would I have resorted to any type of violence, be it burning down the home or flying a plane into a building. Instead I remained calm and and presisted in a resolution that saved my home and settled with IRS.

Many people I know believe that property ownership is per se evil, but I have read enough about places like Cuba where home ownership is illegal to perfer to live where there is the choice.

Regulation IS the answer. Violence never is.

Dawn