Occupy Atlanta fights foreclosures in Vine City

• Joeff Davis
• The Occupy Atlanta press conference on Monday at Pamela Flores’ Vine City home.

Occupy Atlanta has swept into Vine City to fight Bank of America over the foreclosure of Pamela Flores’s house. La’die Mansfield, spokesperson for Occupy Atlanta, led a press conference Monday in front of Flores’s nicely kept red brick home across from Kennedy middle school in Vine City. Mansfield announced that Occupy Atlanta would set up tents at Flores house and that her home would become a “hub” to fight foreclosure in Vine City. For the press conference, OA brought together a city councilman, a pastor from a local church and a certified mediator to join the fight.

Occupy Atlanta has fought several battles this year, building coalitions and bringing attention to issues that negatively effect Atlanta: the foreclosure crisis, economic disparity, job layoffs, and the anti-first amendment SB469 bill. They have done so by setting up camps in various places and occupying them to raise awareness of the issues and to try to bring about change. All the while, putting their lives on hold, risking arrest, and sleeping in the most uncomfortable of situations.

Occupy’s latest battle is against Bank of America and other banks who they say are “stealing people’s home’s by making people pay inflated mortgages that are often three or more times more than the current value.” The group also rails against CEO salaries at banks and Wall Street. Their current motto in the foreclosure fight is “we bailed them out and now they have bailed on our communities.”

In choosing Vine City to fight the foreclosure battle, OA has entered ground zero for the housing crisis in Georgia, which has the 4th largest foreclosure rate in the country. Driving the streets of the neighborhood, one is shocked by the number of boarded up houses - on many streets more houses are boarded up than are lived in.

In this latest occupation they are trying to help Miss Flores keep the home she bought in 2006. According to Miss Flores, she attempted to get a loan modification with Bank of America through the “Making Homes Affordable” program. The bank told her to qualify for the loan modification she needed to miss a few mortgage payments. During the time she did not make the payments, she claims, at the bank’s request, she fell into foreclosure.

Now eligible for “Making Homes Affordable” program Flores began a trial payment period in August 2009. Bank of America, instead of granting the loan modification, notified Flores in January 2010 that she would be ineligible for a permanent loan modification on the grounds that she had missed four out of five trial payments. During the time Bank of America was locating payments based on the receipts Flores provided, Bank of America started the foreclosure process. Although she was able to stop two previous auctions by filing bankruptcy, her home is once again up for auction in May. She could be thrown out of her home anytime, and says she cannot sleep at night because she is afraid the Marshal will evict her, she was also recently denied her student loan on the grounds that her home was up for foreclosure, she was a graduate student at Emory University. All this despite, according to Flores, having paper work that proves that she has made all the payments except the ones Bank of America told her to miss. Flores is hoping that she can receive the loan modification Bank of America promised her and stop the foreclosure process on her house. She wants Bank of America to grant the loan modification using the houses current value of $38,000 rather than the value that she bought it at which was $180,000.

CBS news reached out to Bank of America, which says Flores was a month late on her first payment to the modification program, which led to their denial of her continuance in the modification program.

Meanwhile, Occupy Atlanta has started to go door-to-door in Vine City trying to organize the neighborhood to take on some of the housing issues that confront residents. “Pamela Flores is choosing to fight back and occupy Atlanta will stand with her every step of the way.” Says a flyer OA is currently posting in the neighborhood and handing out going door to door in the community, “Its time for Vine City residents to come together and create a community where our neighbors can’t just slip through the cracks.” OA is organizing community meetings to discuss housing issues where a lawyer and a community moderator will be there to help residents. The first one is this Thursday at 7 p.m. at Flores house on 245 Griffin street in Vine City.