A bank foreclosure and eviction goes horribly wrong when the former homeowner took four firefighters hostage in a suburban Atlanta, Georgia neighborhood on Wednesday.

The gunman who took four Georgia firefighters hostage Wednesday has been shot and killed, reportedly by SWAT-team members. One police officer was wounded, and all four firefighters have been taken to the hospital for minor injuries. The hostage scene erupted Wednesday afternoon after firefighters responded to a 911 call from a man saying he was having a heart attack at a home near Atlanta, police said. The gunman reportedly was holding the firefighters hostage over demands his utilities and cable be turned back on.

Initially five firefighters were held, but the gunman released one in order to move the fire truck.

NBC Atlanta 11 Alive:

According to authorities, police used a "flash bang grenade" to distract the suspect when they felt their officers were in "immediate danger" on the scene.

All four of the firefighters taken hostage are safe and sustained superficial wounds during their recovery effort and one Gwinnett County officer was injured. According to authorities, the officers injuries are non-life threatening.

A sheriff's deputy said the gunman is upset that the house is in foreclosure, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

According to property tax records, the home where the firefighters were being held was foreclosed on in November 2012 by Wells Fargo, and the mortgage then sold to Fannie Mae.

Gwinnett County Police Cpl. Edwin Ritter said the unidentified gunman was facing eviction and wanted the power turned back on.

The identity of the deceased has not yet been released pending notification of next of kin.

Jodie Randolph tells the story of the struggle to keep her home.

Jodie Randolph is a small-business owner in Alameda, California. She is also a breast-cancer survivor, and is in treatment for colon cancer.

Jodie has been fighting to stay in her home for years. Companies affiliated with Morgan
Stanley shuttled the loan around from one subsidiary to the other until they foreclosed on her. Morgan Stanley’s tactics have included:

• Pushing her into a predatory refinance
• Moving her loan around from company to company so she couldn’t get a fix on who to negotiate with
• Removing the lawyer for Morgan Stanley who was actually negotiating with Jodie when they were
close to reaching a mutually acceptable plan.
• Stunningly, breaking in and changing the locks to her house while she was at a chemotherapy
session.

Supported by a delegation of her family, friends, neighbors, the Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense Group, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and other foreclosure activists, Jodie has staved off eviction from her home since November 2012.

In a terrific initial victory for people’s action and home defense, Jodie was able to meet Monday, with Morgan Stanley. In November, when Jodie came to Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense, she had no prospect of a bank meeting, and all negotiations and legal actions seemed over and done.

She and her allies sat down fairly amicably with bank representatives, including a lawyer flown in from Southern California, and presented her proposal for how the foreclosure could be lifted and a fair loan modification could be put in place. Morgan Stanley is ‘considering’ her proposal.

In the meantime, the home defense continues as everyone hopes and waits.

View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.

A bastion of the contemporary Occupy movement is no more. A foreclosed house dubbed Fort Hernandez was cleared out by sheriff's deputies early this morning, observers report.

The eviction after a four-month sit-in at the Hernandez family home in Van Nuys was reported about 4:30 a.m. The eviction of 18 people, including four to six family members and 12 occupiers, and 5 dogs went smoothly, with no arrests or injuries.

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department carried out the eviction with armored vehicles and nearly 100 police personnel.

Dump trucks were brought in to break down the encampment.

“They were living in tents and hadn’t paid the mortgage for about 4 years,” according to L.A. Co. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Occupiers fed up with big-bank foreclosures, particularly in light of the federal bailout in 2008, upheld Fort Hernandez as a symbol since late August.

They say there are more empty homes in the same Van Nuys neighborhood than there are homeless.

A Bank of America spokesperson said, “We have made multiple attempts to offer Mr. Hernandez assistance since he stopped making payments in 2008. Prior to foreclosure, we requested financial documents over a 6-month period, but Mr. Hernandez never submitted the necessary documentation for us to complete our review.”

Hernandez said his only hope is to fight the bank in court.

Info via Occupy Sandy - Staten Island / SI Recovers @SIrecovers

ACTION ALERT: Support the community hub at 489 Midland Ave

ONSITE ACTIONS
—Come to 489 Midland Ave Staten Island, NY 10306 to stand in support
—Volunteers requested to help move the hub to 100% private property

OFFSITE ACTON
—Demand the Mayor’s office end community hub eviction and instead support hubs with space and equipment
—Public Advocate’s office: (212) 669-7250 9am-5pm EMAIL: GetHelp@pubadvocate.nyc.gov

The community-run network of support for food, volunteering, supplies, clothing, and human services is an essential part of the New York City recovery efforts, and the mayor’s office wants to shut it down immediately. The mayor’s office is calling upon local police forces to “clear all outdoor sites” effective immediately. We are calling on all New Yorkers to advocate on behalf of these community run hubs that provide essential services to those whom the city and federal government, and support agencies, have under-served, neglected, or abandoned.

We call on the city, service organizations and police to support these crucial hubs by maintain location and services to community, offering tents, generators, and storage pods for supplies or finding free, nearby, and feasible medium to long term spaces where hubs can operate.

This Friday morning Staten Island police representing the mayor’s office have threatened eviction action against the crucial Staten Island hub at 489 Midland Avenue, in the heavily hit Midland Beach area. Aiman Youssef, a 42-year-old Syrian-American Staten Islander whose house was destroyed in the hurricane, has been running a 24/7 community pop up hub outside his property at 489 Midland Avenue since the day after the storm. He and a coalition of neighbors, friends and community members are serving hot food and offering cleaning supplies, non-perishables, medical supplies, and clothing to the thousands of residents who are still without heat, power, or safe housing. This popular hub is well-run, well-staffed, and has a constant hum of discussion, support, and advice as well as donations and pick ups and volunteer dispatch through another pop-up group, volunteers who call themselves “The Yellow Team.”

At the standing-room only Town Hall meeting at Staten Island’s New Dorp High School last night, Youssef was the first to raise his voice in the question and answer period. The community’s expression of extreme need and frustration with the lack of official support made for a contentious environment where city government officials offered few solutions. At one point borough president James Molinaro asked the audience “You wanna shut your mouth?” due to their increasingly loud demands for community support and housing solutions.

We ask all New Yorkers and Sandy supporters worldwide to not heed Molinaro’s demand, but to speak out as Youssef did. Ask the mayor’s office to support, not evict, the well-run community support hubs giving crucial services to New Yorkers in need.

[Via OccupyWallSt.Org]

View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.

For Richard Castaldo, the fight to keep his home out of foreclosure is only the latest in a life that has been full of extraordinary challenges. When he was 17, Castaldo became one of the first students shot during the Columbine High School massacre. Now, he's turned to Occupy Los Angeles to overcome this latest obstacle:

Richard Castaldo has a bullet permanently lodged in his spine from when, at 17 years old, he was shot eight times by two peers at Columbine High School.

Castaldo and his friend, Rachel Scott, were sitting outside during their lunch break on April 20, 1999, when fellow students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold began shooting. Richard and Rachel were the first students hit.

“They shot us both pretty much at the same time. It was all kind of one big spray,” Castaldo said.

He remembers waiting, bleeding for more than half an hour. Before help could arrive, Klebold and Harris returned.

“During that time I heard Rachel crying, and they came back and shot her in the head and I knew she was dead after that,” Castaldo said.

Confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life as a result of the shooting, Richard moved to Los Angeles five years ago to pursue a career in music, only to fall behind on mortgage payments for his condo.Now he hopes Occupy Los Angeles can help him find a way to stay in the city he now calls home.

“I feel like they’re really the only group that doesn’t have an ulterior motive,” said Castaldo, who admits he “should have known better” than to believe the value of his condominium would go up. Roughly 36,000 California housing units received a foreclosure filing in October, according to RealtyTrac.

Time may be running out for Castaldo, as the condo is set to be sold at auction on December 6. But given other successes Occupy groups have had saving homeowners threatened by foreclosure, he may still stand a chance. Over the summer, Occupy Our Homes -- an offshoot of the Occupy movement -- saved the home of a Minneapolis woman and helped another resident of that city resist foreclosure in the same month.

There's also The Home Defender's League who are quite successful at what they do, and they also have quite a few partner organizations -- some affiliated with the Occupy movement, some not -- even in California.

Richard won't be alone in this fight, and he's in good hands.

I'll update with any new developments.

[Caution: Strong language warning]

You really have to watch the video to believe how this Denver woman's eviction from her home of 24 years was handled. Never in my life have I seen anything like this. Grenade launchers to evict a 63-year-old woman?!?

Last week, a highly militarized police force arrived at the home of 63-year-old Sahara Donahue to evict her from her residence of 24 years.

Donahue was petitioning US Bank for an additional 60 days to remain in her home, so she could have some time to find a new place to live, secure her belongings and leave her home with dignity. She came to the Colorado Foreclosure Resistance Coalition and an Occupy Denver General Assembly to ask for our help.

She knew no one in Occupy Denver prior to reaching out. We immediately started mobilizing to try to get her the assistance she needed and a group went to her house for the first rumored eviction on October 25. When that eviction didn’t happen, we planned an in-town action at US Bank, hoping to compel a bank official to ease Sahara's situation. Then we sent carpools up to her house in time for the rescheduled eviction, on October 30.

Occupiers laid barricades from fallen trees to prevent moving trucks and workers from entering Sahara's property and were able to stave off the eviction for a few hours. At 2:45 p.m., 10 or more truckloads of police in full combat gear armed with live-ammo AR-15s and grenade launchers arrived on the scene and forced occupiers to the ground at gunpoint.

Police then made their way to the house, broke down the front door, threw Donohue to the ground in her own kitchen and pointed their guns at the heads of a mother and son who were in the house with Sahara, among others. Police continued to break items in the house as they searched it. They unplugged the modem - the home's only form of communication as there was no cell phone coverage in the area - in order to stop the livestream.

The Occupy Denver legal team spent the next harrowing hour in a communication blackout wondering if they would be receiving calls from the hospital or the jail. Meanwhile, one brave foreclosure defense activist jumped into the bucket of the bulldozer that was going to tear through the barricades, forcing the operator to stop for several minutes. Three arrests were made, two activists were assaulted and all have been released.

Many people on the ground outside Donahue's home had experienced riot cop violence against Occupy demonstrators before, but all agreed that this was the most surreal and violent state repression they have witnessed. There has been overwhelming community support as other activists and concerned people watched the militarized drama unfold online. The big question everyone is asking: “Seriously, why are they in military gear?”

[Via]

By Cora Currier -- ProPublica

Florida has the highest percentage of home loans in foreclosure in the country. So why is more than $300 million that could help homeowners sitting unused?

Florida was awarded those millions in February as part of the $25 billion national settlement between five of country's biggest banks and forty-nine states and the District of Columbia. The settlement resolved allegations of wrongful foreclosures and other mortgage servicing abuses, and required banks to offer some homeowners the opportunity to modify their loans or refinance, or, in some cases pay homeowners directly for wrongful foreclosure.

The banks also had to pay $2.5 billion directly to state governments. Florida's sum was the largest, after California, in part a measure of how deeply the mortgage crisis affected the sunshine state.

Yet Florida is one of just a few states where the Attorney General has not announced plans for a significant portion of the money. We've contacted every state to find out what they were doing with that money. Of the $2.5 billion going to states, just over a billion dollars has been pledged for housing-related programs, while a roughly equal amount has been diverted to plug budget holes or fund programs unrelated to the foreclosure crisis. $378 million is still to be determined, and almost all of that is Florida's.

Florida's funds are caught between the Attorney General, Republican Pam Bondi, and the Republican state legislature. Bondi has pledged to make the money available to homeowners; earlier this year, she called for suggestions from the public. Some state lawmakers, however, insist that it needs to go through the regular appropriations process u2014 where it could potentially be siphoned off into other programs. And that wouldn't happen until March, when the legislative session begins.

Continue reading »

This may well be a new low for a bank. On the morning of October 10, 2012, Niko Black was in bed when her front door was kicked open by the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Black, who has terminal cancer, crawled to her wheelchair as four-to-six deputies entered and proceeded to hold a gun to her face. She was then taken outside without any of her medication. When she called the Garden Grove Police, they did nothing. Since all of her medication and other means of treatment were in her home, Black began to have difficulty breathing, and very quickly and had to be taken to the hospital.

Via:

The 37-year-old Mescalero Apache woman, who suffers from a rare, malignant and metastatic form of cancer, refused to open the door, saying that they had no legal right to be there. On the other side was a taped copy of a court order obtained from Federal Bankruptcy Judge Theodore C. Albert in late August that she firmly believes should have prevented the OCSD from carrying out the eviction. The deputies acted anyway.

"They break down my door," Black recounts. "I'm sitting there in my wheel chair. I'm about 100 pounds of shriveled-up cancer and a threat to no one."

What came next, she says, was much more harrowing. "Sergeant Bob Sima puts a gun to my face, finger on the trigger, no safety and walks around me," Black states, pausing to emotionally gather herself. "There's no reason, except for to threaten my life, for an intimidation factor, to put a gun to my head."

With neighbors lining up outside watching, Black's health began to worsen. "I needed my medication, I couldn't breathe and I was having a seizure," she said, claiming that deputies were unresponsive to concerns about her condition; one officer even remarked that she 'looked good' to him. An ambulance finally arrived at her friend's behest and she was forcibly removed from her home and hospitalized.

If this situation weren't complicated enough, according to an online petition circulating in support of Black, she never even had a mortgage with Wells Fargo!

Since the eviction, Federal Judge Theodore C. Albert (who signed the court order favoring Black) has ordered Wells Fargo and county representatives to appear in court on November 13 to explain the eviction.

Jacqueline Barber, 20 year Atlanta Police veteran and current cancer patient, is standing up against US Bank. US Bank is currently attempting to waive the stay granted by Jacqueline's bankruptcy and charge her for the associated legal fees. Help stop Jacqueline's eviction by signing this petition:

http://start2.occupyourhomes.org/petitions/us-bank-don-t-evict-cancer-patient-jaqueline-barber-keep-her-in-her-home-1

Via:

Less than a year after Occupy Atlanta members clashed with police in riot gear in a downtown park, they're now protesting alongside officers to help a retired detective avoid losing her home to foreclosure.

Activists joined current and retired Atlanta police Monday for a demonstration and discussion at the home of retired Atlanta police Det. Jaqueline Barber in Fayetteville, south of the city.

"The police are in the 99 percent and when it comes down to their economic struggles, we're going to be there to shine a light on those and organize around those," said Tim Franzen. He and others who were involved with Occupy Atlanta are now part of a group called Occupy Our Homes ATL, which focuses on the housing crisis.

There is a court hearing set for Thursday of this week for Jacqueline Barber, and it's feared that she will be homeless if she doesn't win this round with the bank.

I'll be updating as information becomes available.

"Fannie Mae, you can't hide, we can see your greedy side," chanted over 200 homeowners and renters from across the country, who protested recently in front of Fannie Mae headquarters in Northwest, Washington D.C.. The protestors gathered to demand the resignation of acting Federal Housing Authority Director Edward DeMarco, whose agency oversees twin Government-backed mortgage regulators Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.