Foreclosure Crisis

We wonder whether the thousands of hardworking Maryland families who have received counseling and assistance through Governor Martin O'Malley's response to the national foreclosure and subprime lending crisis would agree with Marta Hummel Mossburg's assertion that it has all been a waste of effort ("State fails to stem the tide of foreclosures," Jan. 5). Maryland's response to the crisis is considered among the most comprehensive in the nation because it has had tangible benefits.

For more than 13,000 Maryland homeowners whose houses are in foreclosure and 2 million more across the nation likely to face the same fate this year, a rescue package tentatively agreed to yesterday in the U.S. Senate is likely to provide only limited relief. It offers $100 million to provide counseling, bonds to fund refinancing and tax credits for purchasers of foreclosed houses and $4 billion in grants for local governments to buy foreclosed properties to protect neighborhoods. They're all useful steps, but they are unlikely to do more than ease the impact of the housing bust and allow both parties to say they are attacking the problem.

Marjorie Benedum and her husband, Mel Harris, knew their landlord was facing foreclosure but were reassured when he said they could keep renting the Southwest Baltimore house after his family lost it. Then Harris, who is 79 and retired, came home from church three weeks ago to find a sheriff's notice on the door. Get out in 10 days, it said, or be evicted. "We weren't sure what we were going to do," recalled Benedum, 62. More and more renters have been caught up in the national foreclosure crisis, and lenders taking back those homes nearly always want them gone.

A Hunt Valley attorney who admitted to having his employees sign his name to foreclosure documents was found by a Baltimore County judge to have violated three of Maryland's rules of professional conduct for lawyers, according to court records. Thomas P. Dore engaged in behavior that was "prejudicial to the administration of justice" by "routinely and repeatedly" filing "with the courts affidavits purportedly signed by him and attested to by notaries" he employed, according to court documents.

Maryland's Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez has been tapped to run the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, President Barack Obama announced yesterday. Perez's move, which had been widely rumored for weeks, means he will rejoin an agency where he worked as a federal prosecutor in the 1990s. As head of Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, Perez helped to craft the state's response to the foreclosure crisis. His political career in Maryland also included a stint as the first Latino elected to the Montgomery County Council and a campaign for state attorney general that he abandoned after being disqualified for lacking the required legal experience in the state.

About 1,000 Baltimore-area residents are expected to receive thousands of dollars each under a landmark $175 million settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice and Wells Fargo over accusations of discriminatory lending practices. Under the terms of the deal announced Thursday, Wells Fargo also will provide $7.5 million to the city of Baltimore, which federal officials credited with first raising issues of discrimination related to bank's subprime mortgages. The city alleged Wells Fargo steered minorities into subprime loans, gave them less favorable rates than white borrowers and foreclosed on hundreds of Baltimore homes, creating blight and higher public safety costs.

Con artist Rodney Getlan did not just take people's money - his actions caused them to lose their homes. That he stole the sanctuary of a roof and four walls may have led to Getlan's getting a much longer prison term. Baltimore County Circuit Judge Vicki Ballou-Watts sentenced Getlan to 35 years in prison this week, a sentence on par with punishment for some violent crimes. "Rodney got what he deserved," said Lauri Hartz, who attended the court proceeding as one of nearly 50 known victims of Getlan's scheme to divert mortgage payments to his own accounts.

In an effort to offer relief to neighborhoods affected by the national home foreclosure crisis, the Baltimore County Council last night unanimously approved an application for a $4.4 million grant from a federally funded rescue plan. Maryland, which has received nearly $27 million to help communities attract qualified buyers to neighborhoods where home-foreclosure rates are high, will distribute the funds under the Neighborhood Conservation Initiative. Baltimore County is one of 21 jurisdictions to have applied.

A Virginia firm said Friday that it purchased six rental complexes in Woodlawn for $190 million and intends to spend close to $8 million more to renovate the 1,984 units. The Norfolk-based Harbor Group International purchased the 808-unit Crosswinds at Rolling Road, the 92-unit Diamond Ridge, the 270-unit Glens at Rolling Road, the 264-unit Granite Run, the 280-unit Rolling Wind and the 270-unit Stratton Meadows. The acquisition, from an affiliate of Sawyer Realty Holdings, brings to more than 3,300 the number of rental units Harbor Group owns in the Baltimore area.