Every day, a group of entrepreneurs holding tiny laptops show up on the Multnomah County Courthouse steps, eager to pick up homes on the cheap. The foreclosed home auctions are the end of a long, terrible financial episode for many local homeowners.
Today, one day before Christmas Eve, the house of 49-year-old Southeast Portland resident Angela Hill was slated for the auction block. Occupy Portland sent out an email and Facebook alert about the auction last night and just over a dozen activists rallied this morning at the courthouse to try and save Hill’s home. They were in luck: No one bid on the property, so Hill gets to stick around for at least a little while longer. (EDIT: While Occupy sent out the alerts, the action was actually organized by We Are Oregon and Unsettle Portland)
Hill was running an adult caretaking business out of the seven-bedroom home, but the business was rocky and Wells Fargo began threatening her with foreclosure in 2008. “Every time I called in to consult with someone, I was going in circles,” says Hill. “They would only give me people who were not decision makers, it was like a circle every time I called them and yet they were continuously harassing me with the language, ‘This is an attempt to collect a debt.'”
Postal carrier union organizer Jamie Partridge was at the protest and told the crowd he had spoken with County Chair Jeff Cogen earlier about backing a county moratorium on foreclosure auctions.
“They think it’s illegal to declare a moratorium. BUt the sheriff can decide not to evict people. The sheriff said he was open to it,” says Partidge. “It’s up to us to bring that to the county commission and sheriff and make it happen.”
Update 12:12pm Jeff Cogen sends this brief note about the issue:
I am open to looking at any legal option that would help ease the pain in this tough economy of foreclosures and evictions. I will continue to have conversations with the rest of the board and community members to see what alternatives, if any, could develop to help the situation.
“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Oregonlive commenters suddenly cried out in racist terror and were suddenly rendered completely illiterate. I fear something progressive has happened.”
Don’t worry, 6. I’m sure frankieb, D, and Andy will be along shortly with their oregonlive capes on to tell us this woman is destroying our community and deserves to spend Christmas morning at the bottom of the river.
Thanks for the props there ‘joy’ – but we really don’t know that her buisness model was sustainable from the info in the article now, do we?
We do know they have been threatening forclosure since 2008 though – even before the economy took a major shit.
So yeah, I am suspicious. And the tag that goes along with the photo – meant to inflict knee-jerk sympathy “I’m just a single mom” doesn’t help us to know anything really. In my opinion SMirk was just pandering there (love you though Sarah…)
Give us the details of her business venture in full account before making her out to be the complete victum here. We deserve the details too, to judge for ourselves.
Maybe she is the victum of an EVIL BANKING SYSTEM, but from the info given to us here, we just don’t know – do we?
shit….’victim’…
According to todays Oregonian, she is a unemployed registered nurse.
Nurses make some pretty damn good money, and the health care sector has been able to weather the economy better than most…. and I believe there is a shortage of nurses as well.
So what gives then? Why isn’t she working and paying her bills?
“Hill was running an adult caretaking business out of the seven-bedroom home”
Oh, is that what they are calling crack houses these days?
When every you really need help, and hope that people will rally behind you to keep your home for you and your children, because you are all your children have…..i hope there is not a discussion on if you really deserve it, and all the ins and outs of how much does a person need of help, and if they even need help.
She’s being evicted. Homeless is next. Does she need to show her bank account to get help? Does she need to get on her knees fall apart and beg for help?
This can happen to anyone in today’s world. You can’t pay, you are in the street the next day!
No worries, I am forgetting everyone and everything I read her, because it’s turned my stomach. If you need help in the future I won’t remember your name that have posted. I’ll be there for you. It’s time to wake up, and unfortunately most don’t until it happens to them.
Lasita-Angel