NCAAbbs

From CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/08/chicago...index.html

Quote:CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- An outraged sheriff in Illinois who refuses to evict "innocent" renters from foreclosed homes criticized mortgage companies Thursday and said the law should protect victims of the mortgage meltdown.



Sheriff Thomas J. Dart said earlier he is suspending foreclosure evictions in Cook County, which includes the city of Chicago.

The county had been on track to reach a record number of evictions, many because of mortgage foreclosures.

Many good tenants are suffering because building owners have fallen behind on their mortgage payments, he said Thursday on CNN's "American Morning."

"These poor people are seeing everything they own put out on the street. ... They've paid their bills, paid them on time. Here we are with a battering ram at the front door going to throw them out. It's gotten insane," he said.

Mortgage companies are supposed to identify a building's occupants before asking for an eviction, but sheriff's deputies routinely find that the mortgage companies have not done so, Dart said.

"This is an example where the banking industry has not done any of the work they should do. It's a piece of paper to them," Dart said.

"These mortgage companies ... don't care who's in the building," Dart said Wednesday. "They simply want their money and don't care who gets hurt along the way.

"On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We're not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We're just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today."

Dart said he wants the courts or the state Legislature to establish protections for those most harmed by the mortgage crisis.

In 1999, Cook County had 12,935 mortgage foreclosure cases; in 2006, 18,916 cases were filed, and last year, 32,269 were filed. This year's total is expected to exceed 43,000.

"The people we're interacting with are, many times, oblivious to the financial straits their landlord might be in," Dart said. "They are the innocent victims here, and they are the ones all of us must step up and find some way to protect."

The Illinois Bankers Association opposed the plan, saying that Dart "was elected to uphold the law and to fulfill the legal duties of his office, which include serving eviction notices."

The association said Dart could be found in contempt of court for ignoring court eviction orders.

"The reality is that by ignoring the law and his legal responsibilities, he is carrying out 'vigilantism' at the highest level of an elected official," it said. "The Illinois banking industry is working hard to help troubled homeowners in many ways, but Sheriff Dart's declaration of 'martial law' should not be tolerated."

Dart was undeterred Thursday.

"I think the outrage on my part with them [is] that they could so cavalierly issue documents and have me throw people out of homes who have done absolutely nothing wrong," Dart said. "They played by all the rules.

"I told them, 'You send an agent out, you send somebody out that gives me any type of assurance that the appropriate person is in the house, I will fulfill the order.' When you're blindly sending me out to houses where I'm coming across innocent tenant after innocent tenant, I can't keep doing this and have a good conscience about it."

Renters are the people still suffering from the flooding in New Orleans. The insurance companies paid the owners of rental homes that have now been bulldozed and the land cleared and left bare. The owners could not rebuild for the amount of money they probably under-insured the houses for so they just pocketed the money and waited to see if the governments would help them out. Except for a handful of Habitat for Humanity houses, there are no homes being built at a price these renters can pay. They remain stuck in FEMA trailers with no choice in sight. Those who owned the houses they lived in were helped by various government programs to rebuild along the Gulf Coast and in the middle class neighborhoods of metro New Orleans. Like the renters in Chicago, they find they are the "people who don't matter" in business. Maybe the sheriff will be nominated for the Medal of Freedom given by the President.

You are kidding right? So what incentive does anyone have to pay their rent? This is chaos and the sheriff should at least be fired and at worst be arrested. This bozo is encouraging illegal behavior.

BTR Wrote:You are kidding right? So what incentive does anyone have to pay their rent? This is chaos and the sheriff should at least be fired and at worst be arrested. This bozo is encouraging illegal behavior.

He's not suspending evictions due to not paying rent. He's suspending evictions due to foreclosures because renters are being evicted because their landlords are being foreclosed on. I'm not passing judgement one way or the other, but wanted to make sure you understood what he's doing.

Damn the lenders! Damn the lenders! Damn the lenders! Damn them all!

Now, what about the borrowers?

I do believe the renters are the victims here, and deserve some kind of protection, but we're shooting at the wrong bad guys here.

Yeah, I'd say the renters are getting the shaft. They can't help it that the guy who bought the building can't afford to pay for it.

BTR Wrote:You are kidding right? So what incentive does anyone have to pay their rent? This is chaos and the sheriff should at least be fired and at worst be arrested. This bozo is encouraging illegal behavior.

No he shouldn't, I'm sorry but if you pay your rent and your landlord get foreclosed. You shouldn't be evicted that is the main issue. If you follow the rules and pay your rent on time, I see no reason for the sheriff to evict you because your landlord can't pay his.

There is something called the rule of law. You may not like it. You may prefer chaos but I prefer the rule of law. First of all... I don't have a clue what percentage of these foreclosures are for corporations who rent. No idea. I do know that they are not all corporations. I repeat my opinion of why would anyone pay rent (or mortgages) if there is no recourse for not doing so?

If someone's landlord doesn't pay their mortgage what is supposed to happen to the person renting? Should they get to stay there forever? Normally if a bank or mortgage company takes over a commercial property, they continue collecting from the people who are there. I know because I have been involved in one of these cases. The person renting the apartments/houses doesn't pay, the bank takes over the property and in our case the exact same management company stayed in place. We still paid our rent each month as we had been.

THIS IS A POLITICAL STUNT and that is all it is. The guy should be held in contempt and lose his job.

The "LAW" is SUPPOSED to protect those who "play by the rules". These renters did just that. The sheriff in this case should be celebrated, not condemned, because he is being FAIR to the renters. They have done NOTHING wrong, but were being put out of their homes because of the actions of property owners. I think our Founding Fathers would approve of the sheriff's actions. The LAW should NEVER be used to punish the innocent. The law can be wrong, just as we learned in Alabama over the last 5 decades.

The big evil lenders are just trying to do with every last one of us would do, trying to recover their interests.

The renters aren't screwed by the lenders. They're screwed by the borrowers.

If these renters feel they are being mistreated, any one of them can seek a legal injuction to delay the process until a judge can rule on this. There are plenty of lawyers in Chicago that would be willing to take the case pro bono. The renters have contractual rights unless they were reckless enough to not sign a contact with their landlords. The sheriff is in contempt of the law. He has opened himself up to possible ethics violations, since he has violated his oath of office. He can end up fined, jailed, and removed from office.

He has compassion for those caught in a bad situation; that is commendable. But he is an experienced law officer and it is not his sworn duty to break any law he does not agree with. Most officers of the law swear to uphold the law without passion or favor; he has failed in that duty.

The law is hard, cold, and emotionless; that is the way it was designed. If it is wrong and needs to be changed, the state legislature should change it according to the will of the people.

Wow, I am turning into a long-winded son of a gun.

I have a big problem with evicting tenants of a foreclosed multi-family property because the landlord couldn't pay the mortgage. IMO, with the costs of foreclosure being as high as they are, it makes sense on the surface for the banks/holders of the mortgage to allow the tenants to continue to live in the property so long as they are current on their rent. Cash flowing properties are good ones so kicking out the tenants is counterproductive.