the plight of the highschool homeless

WaPo | During the first days Landis Brewer spent homeless, he maintained a facade of suburban comfort at South County High School, where the all-district running back with the easy smile was the image of teenage aplomb.

But when he left campus, that veneer disappeared. Brewer, 18, slept at a bus stop in Reston and kept his belongings in a garbage bag hidden behind a bush. After his grades started slipping and a teacher caught him dozing off in class, the ugly story tumbled out.

Homelessness had come as a swift, unforgiving series of blows. First, his parents, whose marriage had imploded, disappeared. A few days later, Brewer came home from school to an eviction notice posted on the front door.

Suddenly, he was one of a growing number of teens without parents, guardians or reliable shelter in one of America's richest communities. Fairfax, one of only two counties in the nation with median household incomes above $100,000, counts nearly 2,000 homeless students in its school division - about 200 of whom are, like Brewer, "unaccompanied." The latter figure is twice what the comparable figure was two years ago, a surge reflected nationally as the faltering economy has undermined many families.

The rise has coincided with newly aggressive initiatives by school districts, including Fairfax, that increasingly are getting involved in ensuring their students are not only taught and fed but also housed.

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fannie and freddie foreclosure FAIL!!!

WaPo | As the housing market came crashing down in 2008, the giant mortgage company Fannie Mae took an unprecedented step to help tackle the rising tide of foreclosures. It named an exclusive group of law firms that would help rapidly carry out the unsavory task of filing legal paperwork to remove homeowners from their homes.

Today, problems with documents handled by firms on Fannie's list - and a similar one created by its smaller rival Freddie Mac - are at the heart of federal and state probes over faulty foreclosure practices that now threaten to further undermine the housing market.

Fannie and Freddie, the largest mortgage companies, shaped the practices being challenged in courtrooms around the country. They picked law firms that could foreclose fast and paid them based on how many foreclosures they could process. Speed was essential because delays cost the companies money - and, after they were taken over by the government two years ago, meant losses for taxpayers, too.

Not only did the companies urge swift foreclosures, but in at least one case Fannie executives also greenlighted working with a firm that they knew firsthand had engaged in legally questionable practices, according to documents and interviews with lawyers and industry officials.

That firm was the Law Offices of David J. Stern in Florida, which built a hundred-million-dollar-plus business foreclosing on the tens of thousands of borrowers who lost their homes in the housing crash.

In 2000, the Fannie executive responsible for overseeing outside law firms in Florida was questioned about Stern's firm in connection with a class-action lawsuit alleging it had charged borrowers bogus fees based on fraudulent paperwork.

In a deposition, Susan Reid, an associate general counsel who oversaw Stern's firm for Fannie until two months ago, was asked by a lawyer representing borrowers why her company hired law firms such as Stern's to handle foreclosures.

"We felt that timelines and the time it took to foreclose on a piece of property . . . could be improved," she responded. She explained that with "every month" that passed, "we're losing money."

Did Fannie, she was then asked, have any safeguards to ensure that law firms, rushing to foreclosure, followed the law? "I don't know of any policies and procedures," she answered.

To the contrary: Fannie and Freddie over the years have prodded law firms and mortgage servicers that collect payments to move even faster.

When law firms or servicers have taken too long to foreclose, Fannie and Freddie have threatened to charge them a penalty fee, according to industry sources and documents. And every few months, the two mortgage companies have sent servicers report cards ranking them on how rapidly they completed foreclosures compared with their peers.

Sharga Says Decline in Home Foreclosures Won't Continue
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WaPo | Since the meltdown in the housing market began more than three years ago, Maryland and the District have changed their foreclosure laws to give borrowers greater protection. Virginia has moved in the opposite direction.

Last year, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a law making it easier for lenders to defend themselves when accused of giving homeowners too little warning of impending foreclosures.

The process moves so quickly in Virginia - one of the fastest states in the nation - that homeowners can receive less than two weeks' notice that their house is about to be sold on the courthouse steps.

That confronts homeowners with an almost impossible deadline. To get a court to stop the sale in that narrow window, they must gather evidence, file a lawsuit and potentially post a bond with the court that could total thousands of dollars. Instead of trying to find a lawyer and prepare a suit, many borrowers run out the clock trying to deal with their lender.

At a time when lenders have been cutting corners and using phony documents to seize huge numbers of houses, the hurdles can be insurmountable, according to lawyers, consumer advocates and borrowers who have tried to save their homes.

"There's no question that people are losing their homes when they should not be," said James W. "Jay" Speer, executive director of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, which is part of a legal-aid network.

In many states, homeowners facing foreclosure automatically get a day in court, a chance to tell a judge why they should keep their homes. The judicial process provides at least a modest check on error and abuse.

But in Virginia and 28 other states, as well as the District, according to the RealtyTrac foreclosure information service, borrowers have no such luck. They face "nonjudicial" foreclosure processes, meaning lenders can foreclose without going through the courts.

garden state foreclosure freeze?

NYTimes | Six lenders that together have filed nearly 30,000 foreclosure actions in New Jersey this year face the possible suspension of such operations next month. The possible suspension came under a court order announced on Monday by the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, Stuart J. Rabner.

The action follows a report submitted to the Supreme Court that, citing depositions and court filings in other states, paints a picture of systemic abuses in the filing of foreclosures that include so-called robo-signing, in which employees signed hundreds of documents without checking them for accuracy.

The lenders were ordered to appear on Jan. 19 to demonstrate why the state should not suspend their foreclosure actions. They are Ally Financial, formerly GMAC; BAC Home Loan Servicing, a subsidiary of Bank of America; Chase Home Finance, part of JPMorgan Chase; OneWest; Wells Fargo Financial New Jersey; and CitiResidential Living, a subsidiary of Citibank.

“It’s important that the judiciary ensures judges are not rubber-stamping documents that may not be reliable,” Judge Rabner said on a conference call.

Wells Fargo plans to fight the move, a spokesman said. Representatives for the other banks either declined to comment or could not be reached.

no foreclosure representation in cali

NYTimes | In California, where foreclosures are more abundant than in any other state, homeowners trying to win a loan modification have always had a tough time.

Now they face yet another obstacle: hiring a lawyer.

Sharon Bell, a retiree who lives in Laguna Niguel, southeast of Los Angeles, needs a modification to keep her home. She says she is scared of her bank and its plentiful resources, so much so that she cannot even open its certified letters inquiring where her mortgage payments may be. Yet the half-dozen lawyers she has called have refused to represent her.

“They said they couldn’t help,” said Ms. Bell, 63. “But I’ve got to find help, because I’m dying every day.”

Lawyers throughout California say they have no choice but to reject clients like Ms. Bell because of a new state law that sharply restricts how they can be paid. Under the measure, passed overwhelmingly by the State Legislature and backed by the state bar association, lawyers who work on loan modifications cannot receive any money until the work is complete. The bar association says that under the law, clients cannot put retainers in trust accounts.

The law, which has few parallels in other states, was devised to eliminate swindles in which modification firms made promises about what their lawyers could do, charged hefty fees and then disappeared. But foreclosure specialists say there has been an unintended consequence: the honest lawyers can no longer afford to assist Ms. Bell and all the others who feel helpless before lenders that they see as elusive, unyielding and skilled at losing paperwork.

The revelations three months ago that large banks were sloppy and negligent in preparing foreclosure documents underscore just how important it is for distressed homeowners to have representation, lawyers and consumer advocates say. Homeowners whose cases were handled improperly have little way of knowing it. Even if they found out, they would be hard-pressed to challenge a lender without a lawyer.

“Consumers just don’t know what is going on,” said Walter Hackett, a former banker who is now a lawyer for a nonprofit service in Riverside. “They get a piece of paper saying they are going to lose their homes and they freak out.”

prichard is the future

NYTimes | This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry.

Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its promised retirement benefits in full.

Since then, Nettie Banks, 68, a retired Prichard police and fire dispatcher, has filed for bankruptcy. Alfred Arnold, a 66-year-old retired fire captain, has gone back to work as a shopping mall security guard to try to keep his house. Eddie Ragland, 59, a retired police captain, accepted help from colleagues, bake sales and collection jars after he was shot by a robber, leaving him badly wounded and unable to get to his new job as a police officer at the regional airport.

Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. “When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house,” said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. “He was a proud enough man that he wouldn’t accept help.”

The situation in Prichard is extremely unusual — the city has sought bankruptcy protection twice — but it proves that the unthinkable can, in fact, sometimes happen. And it stands as a warning to cities like Philadelphia and states like Illinois, whose pension funds are under great strain: if nothing changes, the money eventually does run out, and when that happens, misery and turmoil follow.

It is not just the pensioners who suffer when a pension fund runs dry. If a city tried to follow the law and pay its pensioners with money from its annual operating budget, it would probably have to adopt large tax increases, or make huge service cuts, to come up with the money.

Current city workers could find themselves paying into a pension plan that will not be there for their own retirements. In Prichard, some older workers have delayed retiring, since they cannot afford to give up their paychecks if no pension checks will follow. Fist tap Nana.

a society far and above anything else on earth....,

Video - Celebration of conservative American values People as Property.

WaPo | "Dixie," that emotionally freighted and much-debated anthem of the old Confederacy, starts soft when it's done right, barely above a whisper. But each sotto voce syllable of the opening verse, each feather-light scrape of the fiddle strings, could be heard without straining when the ladies in the hoop skirts and the men in the frock coats rose in reverence to celebrate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession.

"We are very proud of who we are," said Chip Limehouse, a South Carolina legislator who rented a historically accurate suit and vest for the formal ball celebrating the anniversary. "This is in our DNA."

Great-great-great-granddad fought the Yankees, lost his plantation, was bathed in glory, the men and women at the ball like to say. They're proud of their ancestors, they declare, and that's why they paid $100 apiece to take part in an event touted as a "joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink."

John B. Hines, a wealthy Texas oilman and cattle rancher, helped, too. He sent a $5,000 sponsorship for the affair because he loves the Old South: "They created a society far and above anything else on Earth." As for the NAACP demonstrators outside, Hines said, their arguments are "nonsense. The NAACP's just hard up for a reason to bitch at people."

Outside Charleston's bulky concrete municipal auditorium, on an unseasonably chilly Southern night, some of the men and women in a crowd of about 100 were thinking about their own ancestors: slaves who picked the cotton for the forebears and allies of the men and women inside. "Disgusting," the Rev. Joseph A. Darby, vice president of the local NAACP chapter, said of the event inside.

On the street, they lifted protest signs; inside, they lifted drinks with names like "Rebel Yell." The stubborn inside-outside faceoff that throttled this jewel of a Southern city on Monday night hints at dramas to come, an unending series of Civil War anniversaries stretching from secession and the firing on Fort Sumter to the laying down of arms at Appomattox. For the next 41/2 years - the span of the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history - Americans black and white will have ample opportunities to wrestle with delicate, almost-impossible-to-resolve questions of legacy and history, of what to commemorate and what to condemn.

South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, but the commemoration will be followed by similar events in other states - parades and balls and speeches and plaques. The anniversaries will press current politicians to tiptoe through minefields of nuance. Charleston Mayor Joe Riley called the Secession Ball "unfortunate" and "the opposite of unifying," but several big-name lawmakers not only attended, but donned costumes to do so.