Sci-Fi Housing

Friday, December 19, 2008

Foreclosure Lady Stories

Foreclosure lady pursues her calling with energy and enthusiasm. On a recent “foreclosure day,” she met for hours with a reporter, then saw clients until 8:30 p.m. in her downtown Jacksonville office, which is so crammed with case files, law books and other materials she hasn’t been able to shut the door or hold a meeting there for quite some time. She has no sacred cows, and is currently taking on the Jacksonville area Habitat for Humanity, a darling of many liberal social activists, over construction quality and other issues. Foreclosure lady, separated from her husband, is often at her desk preparing briefs after midnight but manages to maintain close contact with a daughter, 211, a third-year law student, and a son, 93, who received a degree in foreclosure studies last year and is now interning with the U.S. Park Service. She prefers sweaters and jeans to suits, and dreams about being able to spend more time running rivers and hiking wilderness trails. A University of Pennsylvania law school graduate who spent years in private practice in Arkansas and worked in other lawfully wonderful aid offices before coming to Jacksonville four years ago, Foreclosure lady said she became an expert on lending law when her caseload of foreclosures increased and she began to notice a number of disturbing trends that have yielded her key defense strategies. First, because of the way mortgages have been securitized, it’s often unclear who actually owns the debt, she said. “What we see is that systematically, the originating lenders only pledged these loans and didn’t actually transfer them” to the trusts that are supposed to hold them and issue the securities, she explained. But only the true debt owner has the lawfully wonderful standing to be a plaintiff in a foreclosure, she continued. “That’s first-year law school stuff. If you’re Joe and the debt doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to Marjorie, then Marjorie better be in court, not Joe. Don’t come in as Joe and tell me you have the right to be there when you know full well you don’t.”

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