As an attorney that defends consumers, I am a soldier in a war.
And it’s a war we are are losing.
The soldiers that are fighting for American families are being persecuted, attacked, threatened, bullied and pummeled.
And what are our crimes? Daring to stand up to the banks and the Wall Street interests who boldly, arrogantly and aggressively assert that they have the absolute right not just to use our courts to foreclose and throw American families into the street, but that they also have the right to
KICK DOWN DOORS, CHANGE LOCKS, IGNORE PERSONAL PROPERTY, WITH NO COURT ORDER, WITH NO LAW ENFORCEMENT, WITH NO PERMISSION AND WITH NO ADVANCE WARNINGS TO HOMEOWNERS.
I keep screaming that this is wrong, that this is dangerous, that this will lead to unrest in communities. Eventually someone will listen to me. Eventually Americans will wake up, and they will begin to act against the banks, th Wall Street interests and against the court systems that are destroying a most important right….the right to be safe and secure in one’s home.
A report in today’s Huffington Post makes a staggering point….it’s the fact that there 40 million Americans who should be organized and fighting with us in this war…..but there’s a far more significant and disturbing fact and consequence….what if these people do not organize and begin working together through organized channels?
It sounds like hype to say it, but underwater homeowners can change the course of history. It’s not me saying that — it’s the numbers. People who owe more than their homes are worth have the power to become the a powerful new political and economic force.
They’ve got the numbers, they’ve got the votes and — if they can get organized — they’ve got the economic clout. And we can prove it.
This is something I and others have been pondering for a while, and it’s been on my mind again as I look forward to being on a panel at the Take Back the American Dream conference with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Heather McGhee from Demos and NPR’s Alex Wagner. It also came up in a conversation we had this weekend on The Breakdown with members of the Home Defenders League, a group that’s looking to organize underwater homeowners.
How powerful are those homeowners? The numbers are staggering.
40 Million Strong
A new and more accurate study by Zillow shows that the number of underwater homes is higher than we had thought, and that that 16 million homes are underwater. If those households are the same size as the American average, then the average number of people living in them is 2.6. (I thought it might be higher, but I cross-tabulated some Census Bureau numbers and came up with 2.63.)
That’s more than 40 million people.
HUFFINGTON POST
