by David Dayen
Now NACA brought Save the Dream to West Palm Beach. Michael thought NACA would be an excellent location to call attention to legislation pending before the Florida legislature to strip away homeowners’ rights and allow the Great Foreclosure Machine to hurl forward unmolested. The fight had to reach beyond the foreclosure blogs to generate maximum pressure, he insisted.
Lisa and Michael planned to crash NACA on Saturday—by now Michael’s weekend prohibition had gone out the window. That gave them two days to strategize. They walked among desperate homeowners, mostly low-income Latino and African American couples waiting hours for assistance. They identified security guards and where they patrolled. They mapped out a route for breaking in and for escaping. Michael wedged golf tees in the emergency exits to keep them open in case they needed a quick getaway.
Near sunset on Saturday, Michael, Lisa, and Deirdre, their videographer, pulled into the loading dock at the downtown convention center. The costumes were in the trunk; they also brought flyers to pass out. A security guard stopped them and asked them where they were going. “We’re with the radio station,” Michael said. He’d noticed disc jockeys broadcasting from the lobby the day before.
The security guard nodded and waved them through. Michael parked, and the pig and the banker donned their costumes right there in the loading dock. They entered through a back door, with Deirdre behind them, and walked onto the wide-open convention center floor. At the JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo tables, they passed out flyers and shook their fists. Michael held a big sign reading “PigsAss.org.” People cheered, thinking it was part of the program. But after a few minutes NACA organizers spotted the pig and the banker, confirmed they were uninvited, and alerted security.
Earlier that month, the Florida Bankers Association presented state lawmakers with legislation to make Florida a non-judicial foreclosure state. If the bill passed, judges would no longer have to rule on the validity of foreclosures. Instead, as in twenty-seven other states, banks would merely file notice, give homeowners a nominal time frame to cure the debt, and then kick them out. Under the bill, that period could be as little as ninety days. If homeowners wanted to challenge the foreclosure, they would have to pay a $1,900 filing fee and carry the burden of proving their case. Mandatory mediation between homeowners and lenders, which Florida judges could order, would go away. The bankers pitched the bill as a way to unclog the cash-strapped court system and somehow prevent neighborhood blight caused by abandoned homes. They gave it an Orwellian title: the Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act.
Fraudulent documents were so visible in Florida because of its judicial process. Servicers and foreclosure mills manufactured evidence in other hard-hit states—Arizona, California, Nevada—but without judicial foreclosures, they were buried at county recording offices and harder to find. Eviction rates soared in non-judicial states, too. If bank lobbyists could convert Florida, families facing foreclosure would have fewer protections, and hopes of exposing the scandal would dissipate.
The week before Lisa and Michael’s NACA infiltration, state senator Michael Bennett, a Republican from Bradenton, filed a version of the bill called the Non-Judicial Foreclosure Act for Non-Homestead Properties. Florida had broad homestead protections for most homeowners, restricting forced sales upon death or in response to creditor demands. But if homesteaders abandon the property, they lose their protections. “Abandonment” under the proposed statute could mean a homeowner who never responded to the foreclosure notice, left for vacation for three months, failed to pay property taxes, or “act[ed] in a manner that manifests the intent to surrender the property owner’s interest.” It looked to Michael like banks wanted to create enough loopholes to let them foreclose on anyone. The day before Senator Bennett’s language came out, Wells Fargo tried to evict William Berta of Sarasota because they claimed he “could not be found and might even be dead,” when he was actually living in the residence with his son and two dogs at the time. A process server gave Berta eviction papers at his house after Wells Fargo took the deed in an uncontested foreclosure. Wells’s arbitrary designation of abandonment could end up becoming legal under Bennett’s bill.
Michael created a mini-site about the legislation, uncharitably called PigsAss.org, referring to Senator Bennett. Jim Chambers, the graphic designer who helped with the happy hour flyers, created a form letter people could fax to their legislators, urging them to vote against the bill. The graphic displayed a homely looking pig with the Monopoly man logo stamped over its posterior. PigsAss.org included contact information for Bennett’s Tallahassee and district offices along with the names of all his legislative assistants and their phone and fax numbers. “The Bankers have thrown down the gauntlet,” Michael wrote at 4closureFraud. “Let’s accept their declaration of war and fight back.”
At the convention center two security guards approached Michael, and he zigzagged away from them, waving his arms to whoops and shouts from the crowd. Bruce Marks, CEO of NACA and a former organizer for the Hotel Workers Union in Boston, tried to take the PigsAss.org sign away. Eventually Michael and Lisa got cornered. They were both certain they were headed to jail for trespassing. But security just led them out to the loading dock and left. They headed to the car before anyone changed their mind.
A minute later a security guard came back out and said, “Bruce wants to talk to you.” The guard brought Michael and Lisa, still in costume, to see Marks, who had one of their flyers in hand. “I’m the one who crashes events, not you,” Marks said, and he was right: NACA was known for picketing bankers at their homes and disrupting congressional hearings. “What’s all this about?”
Michael and Lisa explained their efforts against fraudulent foreclosures in Florida and the non-judicial foreclosure bill. Marks smiled. “Well, why didn’t you just call ahead and say so? We would have let you in!” Michael, still dressed as a pig, shrugged. He never thought of that.
NACA Save the Dream events all had a small stage in the middle of the convention center so that homeowners could express their gratitude or organizers could announce the latest statistics on successful modifications. Marks pointed to the stage and said, “Why don’t you go up and make a speech?” Michael, naturally, nominated Lisa.
She hadn’t given a speech since junior high school, never as an activist, certainly never to thousands of homeowners, and really never while wearing a moustache.
“What are you going to talk about?” Michael asked her.
“I don’t know!” she replied.
Lisa stepped onstage, Michael behind her. And they rapidly came face-to-face with America’s digital divide. Lisa started talking about the proposed legislation and how they could stop it. “This is a bill written by the Florida Bankers Association for their own benefit!” she shouted. “It would take away our right to a day in court and allow the banks to cover up their massive fraud!” But the audience consisted of low-income victims of predatory lending, who didn’t spend their days reading blogs and who were not attuned to foreclosure fraud. They had no idea what Lisa was talking about. It was certainly entertaining to see a banker and a pig giving a speech, but it didn’t penetrate any further. Everyone smiled politely, if they listened at all.
Special interests depend on a disorganized public. They don’t want people understanding what lawmakers decide in ornate committee hearing rooms. Keeping the masses preoccupied with their own struggles is critical for unmolested profit-taking. For all their successes, Michael and Lisa’s reach was relatively limited.
Bruce Marks took a picture with the pig and the banker, Michael proudly holding up his sign, Lisa’s face mostly covered by the moustache. And then everybody went home. Michael took a break and spent all of Sunday with his wife and daughter. By Monday, he was back trying to figure out how to stop the damn bill.
In March, Florida House member Tom Grady introduced a broader version of the non-judicial foreclosure bill, subtitled the Homeowner Relief and Housing Recovery Act. That move
d through the state Civil Justice Committee and then the Insurance, Business, and Financial Affairs Committee with little resistance. The Senate version, meanwhile, reached the Banking and Insurance Committee. Two Democrats, state representative Darren Soto and state senator Dave Aronberg, crafted response legislation to preserve homeowners’ access to the courts and add additional protections—they called it the Foreclosure Bill of Rights—but Republicans controlled the legislature, so it didn’t have much of a chance.
On one of her research jags, Lisa noticed that the Florida Bankers Association held a Capitol Day every year, blanketing Tallahassee with lobbyists to argue its priorities. The 2010 version featured a golf outing and a Taste of Florida dinner at the association’s headquarters. Lisa figured that if the bankers could spend a day lobbying the legislature, why couldn’t homeowners? Rather than calls or emails or petitions, it was time to get right in the face of the decision makers. When she explained the idea to Michael, Lisa called it the Rally in Tally. He loved it.
Lisa wanted the entire state to participate; after all, this would affect every homeowner in Florida. She asked Matt Weidner if he would be willing to get people on the west coast to the capital for a rally. In public, Matt joined the chorus of opposition to the non-judicial foreclosure bill, but he knew, because of his family’s history in politics, how things worked in Tallahassee. The first year a politician introduces legislation, they view it not as a potential law but as a moneymaking opportunity. The politician can extract campaign donations from people on both sides of the issue, to ensure that “their voices are heard” when the bill gets closer to passage. When the legislation returns for a second year, stakeholders get nervous that it has staying power and might someday happen. That triggers more campaign donations. Only by the third year would the legislature actually do something about it. But in a less cynical moment, Matt recognized the power ordinary citizens wielded in the foreclosure fraud battle, and thought a show of force could help.
They set a date, April 21; buses would drive overnight to the capital for a day of events. The first goal was to raise enough money to get everyone there. Foreclosure defense firms were an obvious target, given their interest in stopping legislation that would make their business irrelevant. Ice Legal sponsored two buses to transport supporters on the east coast. Matt and a colleague, Chip Parker, put together an ad hoc group, Lawyers for Homeowner Rights. Some of his buddies at JEDTI lent financial support, and Matt also got attorney Mark Stopa to pony up for the west coast bus. A group of homeowner activists from Sarasota, in bill author Michael Bennett’s district, called themselves the Mortgage Justice Group—they had capes and everything—and made plans to attend.
Lisa was the worst person to handle logistics for a statewide bus trip—she had seemingly no concept of time or cardinal directions, and barely knew how to get to Tallahassee, let alone how to coordinate pickups along the way. But this was her life now, so she gave it her best shot. Lisa ultimately scheduled stops in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Gainesville, and Live Oak, as well as west coast buses for Sarasota and Tampa. She wrote talking points for participants to use when speaking with their legislators, and urged them to incorporate their own foreclosure stories. For those who couldn’t make it, Lisa solicited and received letters from homeowners that she would hand-deliver. Lisa contacted the grounds department at the capitol and applied for a permit for a staging area, across the street from the state supreme court. She rented a public address system and speakers from a soundstage company. She promoted the rally fanatically to the press, connecting it to civil rights–era Freedom Rides. Through Matt, Lisa got April Charney, the founding lawyer of the foreclosure defense movement, to make a speech. Within a couple of weeks it was all set.
While they were planning all this, the bills actually stalled in committee. It was too late to stop the rally, and anyway, as Matt Weidner counseled, the bankers planned to come back next year. So they pushed forward as scheduled.
Late at night on April 20, several dozen homeowners boarded buses across Florida to make the hours-long ride to Tallahassee. Lynn decided not to go; where her partners in foreclosure fighting had grassroots energy, she believed in working the legal process from the inside. Michael drove up separately with his family. He took a vacation from his job at the Toyota dealership and never came back. The rally served as an introduction for Jennifer and his daughter to what he’d been fighting for all these months.
Lisa left Jenna with the babysitter and boarded the bus herself. A light rain fell as they motored up I-95, and Lisa watched raindrops collect on the bus windows. She met several people whom she knew only as case studies of foreclosure madness. They talked about their struggles, and their hopes that the trip would lead to something positive. Before long the night got the better of everyone, and they settled back for the long ride. The darkness and the rain imbued Lisa with an eerie calm as she prepared to intrude on the heart of Florida’s political power and demand to be heard.
As day broke, the group stopped at a roadside Cracker Barrel to freshen up. Grace Rucci, whose son was in foreclosure in Palm Beach, walked into the bathroom and saw two children brushing their teeth; they were homeless and living in their family’s car. Foreclosures hit the middle class in Florida; Rucci hadn’t been exposed to real poverty like that. But it symbolized why she traveled eleven hours through the night: to help stop millions of others from experiencing the same fate.
The capitol in Tallahassee sits high on a hill, the rotunda and legislative office tower behind it visible for miles. Buses from east and west converged as the sun rose, stopping near the staging area in Waller Park, at the west front of the capitol. The podium sat just above “Stormsong,” a local artist’s statue of large metal dolphins frolicking over a working waterfall.
During the layover, Lisa changed into a blue suit jacket and shirt; a trademark bright green scarf held her hair in place. She disembarked and ascended the capitol steps, past a replica of the Liberty Bell. Michael found her and introduced his family to Lisa for the first time. As they waited for the rally to begin, they greeted other homeowners, as well as attorneys like Matt Weidner, Chip Parker, and April Charney. Cory Luttrell, a film student who jumped on the bus at the last minute, set up equipment to record the rally. The clouds cleared overnight, and the view from the steps, out toward the state supreme court, was all blue sky.
Matt Weidner emceed the rally, while Lisa and Michael held up signs with their website addresses on them; Ice Legal had a sign as well. Jennifer, Michael’s wife, retreated into the crowd; this was her husband’s moment, and she wanted a good view. “We gotta give credit to the consumer activists that joined this fight,” Matt said, motioning to the homeowners behind the podium. He warned of bankers conspiring to remove fundamental due process rights, and how this battle would reverberate across the country.
State representative Darren Soto and state senator Dave Aronberg, who co-authored the Foreclosure Bill of Rights legislation, thanked attendees for their energy. “Your being here today is sending the message that we need to stand for people,” said Aronberg, who was in the midst of a campaign for state attorney general. Matt also introduced foreclosure defense attorney Chip Parker, who thundered at the mortgage industry’s daily injustices: “We’re living in the steroid era of foreclosures. The banks are juiced in order to win.” April Charney, in her understated drawl, argued that “foreclosure is a failed business model, and we need to stop it at the courthouse door.” If Florida went the way of California and Nevada, Charney said, homeowners’ rights would be bulldozed and foreclosures would skyrocket. “Without our homeowners, we have nothing.”
The sign got too heavy for Lisa to hold, so she passed it off, but by that time her moment had arrived. Naturally, Michael nominated her to speak for homeowners. Since the NACA speech, Lisa started attending Toastmasters for public speaking tips. The leaders there instructed her that she had to expand her repertoire beyond foreclosures; Lisa responded, “But I’m only here to s
peak about one issue.” Matt Weidner introduced Lisa as a “pro se patriot, for all the work she’s doing to spread the message that you have a right to defend your home.” And she stepped up to the microphone.
The most important part of the speech was the first line. “Hi, my name is Lisa Epstein and I am in foreclosure.” Power loomed behind the affirmation. She did not hide reality, safeguarding her credibility out of fear that everyone would stop listening to a deadbeat seeking a free home. She owned her struggle because only through that could she highlight the rot at the heart of the biggest market in the world. She owned it because shame was the tactic the mortgage industry used to sell mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them and forge documents to take back the homes when it all unraveled. Only a raised voice could overcome that shame and help others reject humiliation.
Her voice cracked by the second line, but Lisa held it together. “I cannot believe that I am a citizen of a country that feels it is okay to evict millions upon millions upon millions of its citizens from the only homes that they have,” she said. Lisa said the titles were so dirty that property transfers would be maligned for the next fifty years, if not a century. “And I am here to say, defend your homes, America!”
Lisa used words she found etched in a display outside the Palm Beach County courthouse, among a series of quotations about the American justice system. Daniel Webster, the Massachusetts senator and orator, once said, “The protection of life and property, trial by jury, the right of an open trial: these are principles of public liberty existing in the best form in the republican institutions in this country.”
“Now I don’t know what happened, but that’s etched in stone,” Lisa continued, “and when you go inside the building, we have banks producing fraudulent paperwork and showing them to judges that could never conceive that an officer of the court would show up with something so criminal and so fraudulent.” Lisa told of her days observing at the county courthouse and her efforts to educate judges about the fraud, including her comment to the state supreme court, whose building she could see from the podium. (“Isn’t that just beautiful?” she remarked of the courthouse.) She explained how she never paid a bill late in her life, how she faxed her modification applications to Chase Home Finance for eight months, how she tried her best to stop this horror from being visited upon her and her family, to no avail. She even told the story of September 11, her voice trembling again as she described the scene. “I could smell the jet fuel emanating from their bodies, and I saw the soot and glass particles in their eyes and in their skin. . . . And I thought this is the worst that I am ever going to see in my country. But I was wrong. Because that evil came from outside. And this evil was born within.”