Activists accuse HUD over foreclosures

Organizers with the Michigan campaign for a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions and utility shut-offs demonstrated on March 20 at the McNamara Federal Building in downtown Detroit. The campaign, a struggle project of the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice (MECAWI), has been pressuring Gov. Jennifer Granholm to declare a state of economic emergency and impose a moratorium on home foreclosures. Michigan ranks among the worst states for the numbers of workers losing their homes due to racist, sexist subprime mortgages.

WW photo: Cheryl Labash

But this time, activists had another target—the Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to MECAWI literature: “The U.S. government through HUD is bailing out the banks and lending institutions by paying off loans on foreclosed homes, and then forcing the occupants onto the street. Everyone knows that these homes will immediately be vandalized and stripped. Why is the government making people homeless and destroying neighborhoods?

“HUD’s own rules call for a mandatory moratorium on foreclosures when the federal government declares a state of disaster. Michigan is in a state of economic disaster. We are in a state of emergency. Whole neighborhoods are being destroyed as homes are abandoned after foreclosure by the banks. Detroit’s neighborhoods look just like the Ninth Ward in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. HUD imposed a moratorium on foreclosures in response to that disaster. We demand the federal government impose a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions on all HUD properties in our state.”

MECAWI leader Jerry Goldberg told Workers World: “In Detroit alone over 10,000 foreclosures are the results of defaults on FHA [Federal Housing Authority] loans. While the federal government doesn’t think twice about bailing out the big investment banks like Bear Stearns, that have caused this crisis for poor and working people, it also doesn’t hesitate to throw the poorest families out onto the streets. This government complicity in the subprime mortgage crisis is criminal. HUD is supposed to stand for housing and urban development, not homelessness and urban destruction. We demand a national moratorium on foreclosures and evictions to stop this crisis and give desperately needed relief to the people.”

MECAWI has reserved a bus to go to Washington, D.C., for the April 16 demonstration outside the Mortgage Bankers Association conference, called by the newly formed Ad Hoc National Network to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions. Organizers will bring foreclosure victims and members of devastated communities to Washington to put a human face on the widespread crisis caused by the bankers.

For transportation information and to get involved in this struggle, contact MECAWI at [email protected] or call 313-319-0870.