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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.

Ruby Brown of North Minneapolis won a renegotiated mortgage from Bank of America, just days before her home of 17 years was to be auctioned off in a sheriff's sale. Her settlement marks the fourth negotiated victory for Occupy Homes MN, the activist group formed to help troubled homeowners in the Twin Cities area fight to avoid foreclosure, and homelessness.

Via:

Brown fell into foreclosure after years of struggling with inflated payments in an adjustable rate mortgage — a predatory lending practice which is now illegal. She eventually received a trial modification and complied with its requirements for 12 months, but was dropped from the program anyway. The confusion surrounding her modification prompted her to ask the question: “The people at the top (of Bank of America), do they really know what’s going on?”

Brown began working with Occupy Homes MN and Neighborhoods Organizing for Change six months ago. Like others who have taken the pledge to stay in their homes, she felt her shame dissolve. “It generated a fight in me,” she said. “I didn’t realize there were so many people in the same situation, that it wasn’t just me.”

Ruby Brown has a message for others going through similar situations:

“Come out of the foreclosure closet. You know, there’s help. There are people around the country that are fighting. There’s power in numbers. There are a lot of people going through the same thing. There’s no shame in what is going on. It’s not your fault. It’s an epidemic, and we have to fight for the antidote.”