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Monday December 12, 2011

 
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Occupying foreclosure homes

This past weekend saw the end of the some of the most persistent of the Occupy Protests as demonstrators in Calgary removed their tents Friday and as police in Boston arrested those refusing to move Saturday morning. But even before they were gone the Occupy Movement in the U.S. had found new space re-positioning itself in the living rooms of homeowners facing foreclosure.

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Part One of The Current

Satire

It's Monday, December 12th.

Bell Canada and Rogers plan to buy a majority stake in the company that owns the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Currently, it's a perfect fit for the companies' strategy of extracting huge sums from customers with no place else to go.

This is The Current.

Occupying foreclosure homes - Monique White / Anthony Newby

For months, the Occupy Wall street protesters filled the streets and parks of major cities with their demonstrations against the banks. And now, in several major American cities, they left the street and moved inside.

The Occupy Our Homes protesters aim to fight banks that foreclose on homeowners. In the Brooklyn neighbourhood of East New York activists took possession of a house. They cleaned and repaired the shuttered foreclosed home and moved in a family of four who needed the shelter.

The Current sent reporter Jeffrey Jones to that newly re-occupied home. We aired some tape of what he found.

This new focus of the Occupy movement has spread across the U.S. Monique White has owned her home in North Minneapolis since 2003. But the bank foreclosed and told her to leave -- on the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. She refused. She asked for help from the Occupy movement in Minneapolis. So far, she remains in that house. Anthony Newby belongs to a group called Neighbourhoods Organizing for Change, which is trying to help people like Monique stay in their homes. They were both in She was in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Occupying foreclosure homes - Peter Morici

If home ownership is a family's dream -- eviction is the nightmare. All of us warm to a story of a family getting a home or remaining in one. But banks survive because people buy homes, not get them.

Peter Morici is an economist and professor at the Robert H Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He was at his home in Alexandria Virginia.

We requested an interview The American Bankers Association but no one was available to come on the program this morning.

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