After Foreclosure: Keeping Families in their Homes

In Boston, the grassroots group City Life/Vida Urbana has begun a new project with Boston Community Capital, a non-profit economic development financial institution, which is allowing families to buy back their homes after they have been foreclosed by their bank. This new project addresses one of the cruelest ironies of the housing crisis: although lenders have been unwilling to negotiate to lower the capital owed by borrowers who owe more than their houses are worth, after foreclosure the banks are left with properties that they can't sell and often don't maintain.

Under this new initiative, Boston Community Capital negotiates with banks to buy foreclosed properties, and then lends money to their original owners to buy them back at a little more than their current market value. In areas of Boston where housing prices have dropped more than 40% over the last five years, this program can cut homeowners' mortgages in half.

What makes this program particularly effective is that it is run in tandem with City Life's other housing activism: organizing eviction blockades, occupying forclosed houses, and doing public education and outreach about housing as a human right. These grassroots actions put public pressure on lenders to negotiate deals, and make it difficult and politically unappealing to evict families.

You can read more about this new initiative, and watch a moving slideshow of a recent City Life action on the website of the New York Times.