Starving for a new mortgage
by Tim Manni
Financial stress can be devastating. Studies have shown that financial stress is one of the main causes of divorce. But in today’s society, the past stresses we’ve seen caused by credit card debt seem to have been replaced with the stress brought on by foreclosures. The stress has grown so great for some that we’ve even read reports of borrower suicide.
But this week, a Baltimore woman dealt with her upcoming eviction in a way I haven’t yet seen or heard of: a hunger strike.
Lauren Rymer’s monthly payments were increasing. She soon realized that she couldn’t handle her ever-growing mortgage. When Rymer couldn’t get a refinance or a modification, the Baltimore resident went old school — she painted a sign and headed to the state Capitol to protest.
With less than two months to go before her eviction, Rymer took to the government building with a sign that read “Hunger Strike Against Foreclosure Day 1.” Rymer’s unique protest got her noticed:
Lauren Rymer started just after 7 a.m. Monday and spent an empty-stomach day camped out in Annapolis, trying to get an audience with Gov. Martin O’Malley and talking to passersby who wanted to share their stories of economic woe.
By the time she ate something at 5 p.m. Tuesday, she’d had a foreclosure alternative offered to her by the state housing department, talked to someone from O’Malley’s office about the tax problem and given interviews to a bevvy of media from WBAL to the Huffington Post to MSNBC about her hope that elected officials will do more to help Americans avoid foreclosure.
Unfortunately for Rymer, it doesn’t look as though she’s going to be able to save her home. She was offered a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, which is when the homeowner voluntarily agrees to turn their property back over to the bank. In exchange for handing over their home, the borrower doesn’t get the black mark of a foreclosure on their credit report.
[Rymer says,] “I might not be able to save my home at this point, but there are so many other people in this country that are going through the same thing and worse situations, people who have children, people who don’t have anywhere to go … But I really wanted to call attention to it and particularly to get public dialogue going.”
Know anyone with an interesting story of how they avoided foreclosure? Leave us a comment, let us know. Remember Angela Logan? She baked “Mortgage cakes” in order to save her home from foreclosure. She was so successful that she not only saved her home, but she’s even baking them full time!
