{"id":759,"date":"2009-05-18T21:15:56","date_gmt":"2009-05-19T01:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/?p=759"},"modified":"2009-05-20T18:14:56","modified_gmt":"2009-05-20T22:14:56","slug":"foreclosure-crisis-people-acting-locally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/2009\/05\/18\/foreclosure-crisis-people-acting-locally\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreclosure Crisis: People Acting Locally"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday May 5, the  Boston City Council Committee on Government Operations held a hearing on the protection of victims of the foreclosure crisis.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.openmediaboston.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jason Pramos of Open Media Botson reports <\/a>that over 60 activits attended [ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.openmediaboston.org\/node\/680\" target=\"_blank\">photo<\/a>].  There is also a number of bills before the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts<sup>1<\/sup>in this vein. The Green-Rainbow Party and City Life\/Vida Urbana have invited me to a rally and hearing at the State House.   The action alert from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maapl.info\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending website<\/a>.  It was todayTuesday May19.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_763\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-763\" class=\"size-full wp-image-763\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/files\/2009\/05\/sh2.jpg\" alt=\"Break Up the Banks Rally at the State House when I broke my camera.\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/files\/2009\/05\/sh2.jpg 480w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/files\/2009\/05\/sh2-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-763\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Break Up the Banks Rally at the State House when I broke my camera.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It was a clear sunny day. Perfect for pictures. But since I broke the LCD at the &#8220;Break Up the Banks!&#8221; Rally, I couldn&#8217;t see that my camera was set wrong. The folks for City Life\/Vida Urbana[CL\/VU] showed up.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-766\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/files\/2009\/05\/steve.jpg\" alt=\"Steve Meacham of City Life\/Vida Urbana [right] and Professor Jacqueline Bhabba of Harvard Law School\" width=\"480\" height=\"382\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/files\/2009\/05\/steve.jpg 480w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/files\/2009\/05\/steve-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/>Steve Meacham of City Life\/Vida Urbana [standing] with Professor Jacqueline Bhabba of Harvard Law School.  See my <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/2009\/04\/27\/the-future-of-housing-and-what-to-do-about-it\/\" target=\"_blank\">earlier post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Steve was in good form as he was two weeks ago. Professor Jacqueline was probably back at Harvard grading final exams.<sup>2<\/sup> A number of members of the CL\/VU Bank Tenants Association told their stories.  They were seeking passsage of H.B. 1232 which would require the Banks to keep them as tenants until they actually sell the building.<\/p>\n<p>Grace Ross who ran for Governor on the Green-Rainbow ticket, is leading the lobbying effort for Maapl.  She made quite a good picture introducing the hit sensation anti-foreclosure group, &#8216;The Raging Grannies&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mass.gov\/legis\/member\/glf1.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Representative Gloria Fox<\/a> came out to greet us. If we could just clone her about 200 times we would have a great legislature.<\/p>\n<p>A number of public officials testified in favor of several iniatives citing the effects of the foreclosure crisis on their communities. Details of this legislation is available on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maapl.info\/legislation.html\" target=\"_blank\">MAAPL  Legislation page<\/a>.  MAAPL asks concerned citizens to contact their State legislators on these issues. It is not too late. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wheredoivotema.com\/bal\/myelectioninfo.php\" target=\"_blank\">WhereDoIVoteMa website<\/a> will give you links to your legislators&#8217; home pages.<\/p>\n<p>All of these measures affect a small segment of the people effected by the foreclosure crisis. The Obama plan is also limited. I urged the legislators to pass these bills because we, the homeless, do not really need anymore company in a system that is already taxed beyond the limit. They must pass these bills quickly because there is much more needs doin&#8217; There are so many more in the foreclosure pipeline.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-771\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/files\/2009\/05\/pipeline.jpg\" alt=\"pipeline\" width=\"480\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/files\/2009\/05\/pipeline.jpg 480w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/files\/2009\/05\/pipeline-300x228.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><sup>1<\/sup>This is the offcial name of the state legislature. &#8216;Court&#8217; is in the name but it is not judiciary.<\/p>\n<p><sup>2<\/sup>Lee Goldstine was there and testified, but he was not representing Harvard i.e. I don&#8217;t think Bob Iuliano asked him to go :).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday May 5, the Boston City Council Committee on Government Operations held a hearing on the protection of victims of the foreclosure crisis. Jason Pramos of Open Media Botson reports that over 60 activits attended [ photo]. There is also a number of bills before the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1058],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-dismal-excuse-for-a-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":761,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}