Mayoral spokesman Scott Peterson said Dixon wants to monitor the council debate before taking a position on the bill. Ryan O'Doherty, a spokesman for Rawlings-Blake, said the council president wants to see whether the legislation can be targeted more specifically to owner-occupied properties.
Robert J. Strupp, director of research and policy for the Community Law Center, who helped write the Baltimore bill, said it dovetails with the Obama proposal, which calls for a lowering of interest rates, extending the term of loans and other incentives. Details of the bill will be released next week, he said.
Knowing that it would take longer before residents must vacate would encourage lenders to avoid foreclosure, he said.
"You've got the time now. You might as well try," Strupp said. There have been few third-party sales of foreclosed properties, he said.
"Some note-holders haven't been acting logically," Strupp said. "I've seen them turn down a modification at 50 or 60 cents on the dollar" only to wind up selling the property at auction for 30 cents on the dollar.
Homeowners who pay their mortgages on time would also benefit from the bill, because preventing foreclosures and home vacancies would prevent Baltimore home values from plummeting further, he said.
Henry described foreclosed homes as "starter homes of blight," left open to squatters, drug use and vandalism, and thus reducing neighborhood property values.
"It really is in everybody's best interest" to keep homes occupied, Strupp said. "The alternative is worse for everybody."
Such foreclosure legislation might help Cynthia Davis, who ACORN organizers are trying to help modify the loan on her Northeast Baltimore home. Davis lost her job as a corrections officer in 2008 but said that she and her husband could afford to pay toward their balance from disability and other income. But the lender has not responded to her requests, she said.
"They are just constantly harassing me for the payments but they're not trying to do anything to help me, even though I explained to them my situation," Davis said.
Last week's break-in by ACORN members brought national attention to foreclosures in Baltimore. Beverly, who calls himself an ACORN "foreclosure fighter," used bolt cutters to break the padlock Thursday on the former home of Donna Hanks, in the 300 block of S. Ellwood St. In a WJZ television report, Beverly was shown cutting the lock and saying: "This is our house now."
