Last Wednesday morning, about 40 people gathered on Middle Street, in Springfield’s Liberty Heights neighborhood, to try to save Sellou Diaite’s home.
Diaite and her then-husband bought the house in 2006 for $214,900. The couple split up last year, and Diaite has been struggling to keep up with the mortgage payments on the house, which, according to the city’s Assessor’s Office, is now worth $119,800—a $95,100 drop in value over five years. After months of trying, without success, to negotiate a loan modification with the lender, Bank of America—a process complicated by her impending divorce—Diaite got word that her house was to be sold off at auction. The auction was set for Nov. 9, when Diaite would be visiting family in Senegal, a trip she planned months ago.
While Diaite wasn’t present at the auction, her friends and allies from Springfield’s anti-foreclosure group No One Leaves/Nadie Se Mude were there. In the end, they were not able to stop the house’s sale; Bank of America bought the house itself, for the higher value.
But the fight’s not over, says No One Leaves’ organizer, Malcolm Chu. “Now it’s on to fight the eviction,” he said after the protest. “We like to communicate that the last step of the auction is the first step of the eviction”—and that there are still ways to fight an eviction, both through legal measures and community action.
No One Leaves takes a multi-pronged approach in its fight against foreclosures. This week, that includes bringing pressure on the lender that held Diaite’s mortgage and those on many other foreclosed properties in Springfield, Bank of America. At noon on Thursday, Nov. 17, No One Leaves will hold a protest outside BoA’s downtown Springfield branch at 1414 Main St.
Bank of America is a member of the Mass. Bankers Association, which in September wrote a letter to the city Law Department raising legal objections to two foreclosure-related ordinances passed by the City Council last summer. The new rules require lenders to participate in a mediation process, overseen by the city, before they can foreclose on a borrower, and also mandate that banks put up refundable bonds of $10,000 to ensure that they maintain foreclosed properties once they are vacant. At the Nov. 17 protest—dubbed “Should YOU Be Paying for BOA’s Mess?”— No One Leaves will unveil oversized photos of vacant, foreclosed homes owned by Bank of America in the city.
No One Leaves maintains that BoA is the prime force behind the Bankers’ Association legal challenge, and that it has asked nine local banks that signed the letter to consider dropping their support of the effort, Chu said. On Nov. 5, consumer activists organized a national “Bank Transfer Day,” urging consumers to move their money from big banks to community banks and credit unions. According to the Christian Science Monitor, in the five weeks before the event, following Bank of America’s announcement that it would begin charging customers a monthly $5 debit-card fee, “more than $4.5 billion & shifted from big banks into the nation’s roughly 7,000 credit unions alone.” (BoA ended up dropping the planned fee.) Estimates on how many customers made the switch on Nov. 5 vary. But whatever the total, “people are looking for a place to put that money,” Chu noted—a point No One Leaves has made to the local banks. “They’re in a prime position to take advantage of what’s happening.”
The following week, No One Leaves plans another major Bank of America protest, this one involving like-minded groups from across the region. On Monday, Nov. 21 at 11 a.m., members of seven bank tenant groups, including groups from Springfield, Boston, Worcester and Providence, will gather at the corner of Central and Morris streets in the city’s South End, home to many vacant bank-owned properties. From there, they will march through downtown to the main BoA branch, where, organizers say, the event “will end with a dramatic civil disobedience action.”
Last week, Chu wasn’t ready to say what, specifically, that action will be. In September, at a demonstration at a BoA office in downtown Boston, 21 protesters were arrested for trespassing after refusing to leave the bank’s lobby. A reported 3,000 people attended that event to protest the bank’s handling of home foreclosures.
Last month, the Springfield City Council considered a resolution from Ward 6 Councilor Amaad Rivera calling for City Hall to stop doing business with BoA. The bank responded, in a prepared statement: “Bank of America has a lot to be proud of in Massachusetts, from modifying 18,000 mortgages since 2008 to lending nearly $400 million in the first half of 2011 to small businesses fueling the local economy.” The release went on to tout BoA’s financial support for the Springfield housing organization HAP, Inc., and for tornado relief efforts in the city, among other charitable programs.
Rivera’s resolution—a largely symbolic measure, as the city has only a few thousand dollars on deposit with BoA—was sent to committee for further discussion.
For more about the No One Leaves protests, go to www.springfieldnooneleaves.org.
