Stepping out on her own after a divorce and a sudden layoff, May learned to plaster walls and refinish the floors of her three-family house in Fair Haven. Now she’s learning foreclosure law, joining the legion of New Haven homeowners fighting for their homes in court.
An estimated 1,224 New Haven homes are currently in various states of foreclosure, as communities across the state and country are feeing ripples of a mortgage and sub-prime lending crisis. The number of legal proceedings filed against residential homeowners jumped 85.1 percent, from 121 in the second quarter of 2006 to 224 in the second quarter of 2007, according to The Warren Group. The Independent is telling the stories behind those statistics.
May, who asked to be referred by only her middle name, bought a three-story home on Pine Street with her former husband over a decade ago. They raised a daughter there. They rented out apartments to a series of families on federal rent subsidy, Section 8.
She likes the area, a relatively quiet stretch in Fair Haven. Across the street lies the leafy Union Cemetery — “the best neighbors there are,” said May, standing in the hallway of Superior Court last week after a first appearance before a judge in foreclosure court.
Just five years ago, she stood in that same building, struggling to keep the home as 21 years of marriage ended in divorce court. A judge ruled in her favor and May and her daughter stay. May became a single homeowner with two floors of tenants.
Setting out in the new realm of homeownership wasn’t easy, said May. Section 8 tenants “destroyed” the property, leaving pock marks in the walls when they left. May took out a spackling paddle and smoothed over the damage.
Then, a few years later, she got news that was harder to recover from: In 2005, the insurance company she had been working for laid her off.
Her home, and income from the tenants, were the only assets she had left. She refinanced her mortgage through the Wells Fargo Bank, but struggled to keep up with payments, slipping behind as a tenant left and the apartment remained empty. The porch on the century-old house caved in. She had to replace the roof.
“My Heart Dropped”
One afternoon, May was out trimming the lawn when a state marshal pulled up to the house. Her mortgage was in default, the papers said. The bank would be foreclosing on her home.
“My heart dropped,” she said. “You work so hard to keep something, and someone comes to take it away.”
May knows she’s been behind on payments for months. But at age 47, she’s starting a new life. She’s back in school, studying to become a certified nursing assistant so she can return to working full-time. She has a part-time job taking care of an elderly man, and she’s recruited a new tenant: Her daughter is renting out the first floor of the home.
“I just need a chance to get it right,” May said with a sigh.
Like many of the poor and minority homeowners who have been hit hardest by a recent foreclosure crisis, May couldn’t afford a lawyer. She came alone to foreclosure court, wearing a denim skirt and African-printed blouse in a room of lawyers. She stood up and asked Judge Juliett Crawford for protection from foreclosure.
Crawford perused her papers and shook her head. Like many homeowners appearing pro se, without a lawyer, in court, May had failed to turn in key components of the application. Crawford told her to come back in two weeks.
On the other side of the aisle, representing the Wells Fargo Bank, stood attorney Valerie Finney of Hunt Leibert Jacobson, one of the two big law firms that take on the bulk of foreclosure cases in the state. Finney, who’s been doing foreclosures for 25 years, said she’s seen many pro se homeowners try to protect their homes in the same manner. State law is pretty strict, however, and few succeed, she said.
In the hallway after her court appearance, May wiped a tear from behind her glasses as she recounted her struggle. “It’s just been so hard,” she said. “I fought really hard to save my house, and I don’t want to lose it.”
Like thousands of Connecticut homeowners with adjustable-rate sub-prime loans, May is scheduled to get hit with a sudden hike in interest rates in the next two months, she said. She’s bracing for the blow. In recent months, she has started going to church more often, reading the Bible, looking for the “inner strength to carry on.”
“I’m not going to lay down and let them take my house,” said May, heading home after a morning in court. “It’s my house, and I’m going to do every damn thing I can to fight for it.”
Previous Independent coverage of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis:
‚Ä¢ She’s One Of 1,150 In The Foreclosure Mill
‚Ä¢ Foreclosures Threaten Perrotti’s Empire
The following links are to various materials and brochures designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
How to prepare a complaint to the Department of Banking; Department of Banking Online Assistance Form; Connecticut Department of Banking, Avoiding Foreclosure; FDIC Consumer News; Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut, Inc; Connecticut Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service.
For lawyer referral services in New Haven, call 562‑5750 or visit this website. For the Department of Social Services (DSS) Eviction Foreclosure Prevention Program (EFPP), call 211 to see which community-based organization in the state serves your town.
Click here for information on foreclosure prevention efforts from Empower New Haven.