[PDI] Ohio Rep: Foreclosed owners should squat in their own homes - offers strategy to beat banks in court

*Ohio Rep: Foreclosed owners should squat in their own homes - offers
strategy to beat banks in court*
David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster,
Published: Friday January 30, 2009

This is highly interesting, and a must-read for anyone struggling with a
troubled motgage.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Rep_Foreclosed_owners_should_squat_in_0130.html

If you're poor and the bank is coming for your home, Congresswoman Marcy
Kaptur has a plan for you.

Just squat, she says.

Yes, this Ohio Democrat is actually encouraging her financially
distressed constituents whose homes have been foreclosed upon, to simply
stay put.

In a Friday report, CNN's Drew Griffin explored the case of Ohioan
Andrea Geiss, whose home was foreclosed upon in April.

"Behind in payments, out of work, a husband sick, she had nowhere to
go," said Griffin. "So, she decided to follow the advice of her
Congresswoman and go nowhere."

In Lucas County, Ohio, over 4,000 properties were foreclosed upon in
2008, reports CNN.

"So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes,"
said Congresswoman Kaptur before the House of Representatives. "Don't
you leave."

She's called on all of her foreclosed-upon constituents to stay in their
homes and refuse to leave without "an attorney and a fight," said CNN.

"If they've had no legal representation of a high quality, I tell them
stay in their homes," Kaptur told Griffin.

Kaptur is a high-profile advocate of an increasingly popular mode of
fighting foreclosures best known for it's key phrase: "Produce the note."

By telling a bank to "produce the note," a homeowner can delay
foreclosure by forcing the lender to prove the suing institution is
actually the same which owns the debt.

"During the lending boom, most mortgages were flipped and sold to
another lender or servicer or sliced up and sold to investors as
securitized packages on Wall Street," explains the Consumer Warning
Network
<http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/2008/06/19/produce-the-note-how-to/>.
"In the rush to turn these over as fast as possible to make the most
money, many of the new lenders did not get the proper paperwork to show
they own the note and mortgage. This is the key to the produce the note
strategy."

And Friday's segment on this growing foreclosure fighting "movement" was
not the network's first. Earlier in January, CNN explored one person's
strategy <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUZdANb6UaY> in demanding her
bank "produce the note," only to find that the lender had "lost or
destroyed" the evidence of debt ownership. Such a revelation can
significantly strengthen a homeowner's position when asking to
renegotiate a mortgage.

That these banks, many of which received billions of dollars in
government bailout funds, continue to boot defaulted owners from their
homes, makes them "vultures" says Kaptur.

"They prey on our property assets," she said. "I guess the reason I'm so
adamant on this is because I know property law and its power to protect
the individual homeowner. And I believe that 99.9 percent of our people
have not had good legal representation in this."

Video from CNN's /American Morning/, broadcast Jan. 30, 2009 - available
at story link under headline.

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