Fighting Foreclosure

Our View: Too Many Marylanders Are Losing Out To Unscrupulous Predatory Lenders

A recent report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that between 60 percent and 86 percent of homeowners facing foreclosure in the jurisdictions it surveyed were unrepresented by counsel last year. Low-income and minority homeowners in areas targeted by subprime lenders were the most vulnerable, researchers reported, with up to 92 percent of them facing foreclosure proceedings without the advice of counsel.

As a result of last year's reforms, the state has taken some positive steps. A pilot program in Prince George's County backed by the Maryland Bankers Association allows homeowners to seek mediation if they can show the loan involved fraud or if the lender didn't meet other requirements enacted by the legislature.

And some lenders are working through a federal loan modification program aimed at avoiding foreclosure for borrowers who want to stay in their homes, although the process remains painfully slow.

Mediation, which depends on voluntary agreement between lenders and borrowers, can be a useful tool to settle disputes if both sides negotiate in good faith, and we applaud the governor's readiness to build on his previous foreclosure reforms. But the predatory lenders who are responsible for the most egregious abuses aren't likely to own up voluntarily to their wrongdoing. In those cases, the state must do everything in its power to ensure that innocent victims of such schemes can have their day in court.

Readers respond

Socialism is on its way, and people better wake up because there will be so few of us paying for it. What can we give the non-productive next? We pay for their mortgages, their heating, their food, their kids ...

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