Worcester and Other Communities See Significant Foreclosure Increase According to Advocates
Monday, June 06, 2016
The Warren Group, a leading real estate data firm, has published the newest foreclosure statistics that show a 16.6 percent increase in foreclosure petitions (the first step in the foreclosure process) for April,2016 over April 2015.
This is the 26th consecutive month of year-over-year increases in petitions. There have been 4,484 petitions filed year to date, a 26.2 percent increase from last year’s figure through April of 3,367. For two years, every month saw a double-or triple-digit percent increase in petitions year-over-year.
“I certainly am not surprised that foreclosures are up,” said Rose Webster-Smith a post-“foreclosure” homeowner still fighting to reassert her legal title and organizer for Springfield No One Leaves, “With 74,000 foreclosures and some 140,000 households having already lost their homes in Massachusetts, and this new thousands more losing their homes, where are these homeowners going to live now?”
Webster-Smith continued: “We’re finding more and more empty homes in Springfield. In my little neighborhood, there are 12 vacant homes. None of them are boarded up. Most are all recent bank foreclosures. Some of them haven’t even been to the auction. They are just panicking and leaving. The realtors are trying to say that homes now being foreclosed were bought between 2000-2006 but I know that some of them are from 2009, 2010, even 2013.”
Calling for Action
Homeowner Leaders of the member groups of Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL) call upon Massachusetts Legislature to take action as ongoing significant surge in foreclosure once again puts us above three times the rate at the peak of foreclosures during the Great Depression. These historic foreclosure numbers exacerbate the ongoing damage and illegality of the previous surge in 2010 and 2011 – at no point have the foreclosure numbers receded below historic levels since 2007.
“I have worked with WAFT since September of 2015. I coordinate the outreach that is done by WAFT volunteers who door-knock to homeowners who have been recently foreclosed,” explained Lori Cairns, the organizer for the Worcester Anti-foreclosure Team. “In the last two months the number of foreclosures have doubled. We door knock to approximately 70-100 houses a month. It is truly devastating to see the number of abandoned homes doubled. If people knew their rights they would have known that only a judge can evict you and the auction is merely the first step of the eviction process. Those who are staying in their homes and are fighting are winning more often but then the foreclosure purchasers have also doubled the number of eviction cases our members are fighting!”
“The Massachusetts Legislature has five clear opportunities remaining this 2015/16 legislative session to do something substantial to halt this burgeoning mass of foreclosures,” Roxanne Reddington-Wilde of ABCD, Inc in Boston.
1. MAAPL, a coalition of over 70 organizations statewide considers most crucial Senator Chandler’s and Rep. Keefe’s S482/H888 bill Facilitating Alternative to Foreclosure, which establishes a statewide pre-foreclosure mediation program. Both legislators are from Worcester and know firsthand how foreclosures have harmed the city and its inhabitants.
2. Chandler has also led on S41, clarifying that Worcester, Springfield and other municipalities indeed have the authority under the state’s sanitary code to institute cash bonds on foreclosing banks, establish their own mediation programs and other actions that the Supreme Judicial Court suspended pending legislative approval.
3. Senator L’Italien of hard hit Lawrence filed S1090 to provide municipalities with additional vacant and foreclosed property options under the state’s sanitary code.
4. The state can easily act to change a nonsensical state tax law. Currently, the state claims homeowners have had their mortgage debt “forgiven” when they are foreclosed and hits them with a large tax bill on that “profit.” Everett’s Senator DiDominico and Boston’s Rep. Malia filed what is now H3770 to bring Massachusetts’ tax practice into line with federal law, which fully recognizes that homeowners have made no money off their foreclosure.
5. DiDominico also joined up with Worcester’s Rep. Mahoney in S1463/H2605 to regulate third party investors to whom municipalities are increasingly handing over late real estate tax debt collection. Right now, the investors can claim tax title and foreclose in Land Court on an unsuspecting homeowner, who has no ability to redeem their home.
Related Slideshow: Worcester Neighborhoods with the Highest Housing Costs
How much do Worcester residents spend of their income on housing? Looking specifically at homes with mortgages, the website Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks crunched the most recently available census data to show how much Worcester homeowners pay annually for housing.
Below are the top ten highest housing cost-to-income ratio neighborhoods in Worcester, based on census tracts. Income and costs are annual figures for homes with a mortgage, and are in 2012 inflation-adjusted dollars.
Source: United States Census' 2008-2012 American Community Survey dataset.
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