A Riverside man faces eviction from a La Sierra house he lost to foreclosure, despite attempts to modify or reinstate the loan
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STAN LIM/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The de la Santos family kids from left, Kevin, 8, Sasha 10, and Millie, 7, walk out of their home to head off to school on Tuesday. The family is expected to be evicted from their foreclosed home they have occupied.
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An eviction notice Arturo de los Santos received last week set a 6 a.m. deadline Tuesday for him, his wife and four children to vacate their Riverside house for a second time. But Riverside County Sheriff’s deputies didn’t show up as de los Santos, who took the day off from work, waited in the company of protestors from grassroots organizations.
The three-bedroom house in Riverside’s La Sierra neighborhood was foreclosed in November 2010 and repossessed by Freddie Mac. The family was evicted last June.
The family reoccupied the vacant house in December in protest that they were wrongfully denied a loan modification by their former lender, the Federal Home Mortgage Corp., and by J.P. Morgan Chase, the bank that serviced their mortgage.
The de los Santos family was joined in their vigil by about 25 of their supporters who belong to Occupy organizations and groups like the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment who have been demonstrating their anger with the banking industry for not doing enough to help people save their homes from foreclosure.
Some had stayed the previous night in tents pitched on the front lawn.
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“We will fight to the very end,” said de los Santos, 46, who left the encampment only briefly to drive his eldest son to middle school and to walk his other children to the nearby elementary school. He spent much of the day doing interviews in front of television cameras.
De los Santos said he applied for a loan modification in 2009 when his work hours were cut. He said subsequently his employer’s business improved and he again could afford his original mortgage, even without a modification. He said he was negotiating with Chase’s loan modification department for a way to keep his house when another department at Chase foreclosed.
He said he wants to keep the house that he and his wife bought in 2003 for $205,000, even though it failed to sell at a foreclosure auction for an asking price of $189,000, which is when Freddie Mac took possession of it.
“My wife really loves the house,” he said.
De los Santos said he felt hopeful when, in June, shortly after his family was evicted, he received a letter from Chase saying his monthly mortgage payment would be adjusted lower on Sept 1. He said he believed it was a modification offer.
It was that letter that made de los Santos believe he could get his house back and motivated him to move his family and their belongings back in, he said.
However, Freddie Mac and Chase representatives said this week that the letter was not a modification offer. They said it instead was a routine letter sent to let owners of adjustable mortgages know whenever there is an interest rate change that will affect their monthly payments.
It is inexplicable, said Freddie Mac spokesman Brad German, why Chase sent the letter to de los Santos, since by then he no longer had a mortgage.
Amy Schur, state director of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, said the de los Santos family’s situation is “one more example, of how hard-working families willing and able to make payments to their bank are being put out in the streets because of the banks’ reckless policies.”
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