TELL SACTO: STOP FORECLOSURES IN CALIFORNIA

Petition to Halt All California Foreclosures

To The Honorable Jerry Brown, Governor and Attorney General Kamala Harris:

As your constituents we are demanding and petitioning for an immediate moratorium on all foreclosures in California. Through this petition, we are providing Sacramento with a mandate to stop all foreclosures in California now. Our goal is to gather 1,000,000 signatures to you by December 31, 2011.

About two years ago, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put a freeze on foreclosures for 90 days which went into effect from May 2009 - August 2009. Obviously, that was not enough. Although we applaud your criminal investigation into fraudulent loan and foreclosure practices, the best penalty for banks is a complete halt to all foreclosures in the State of California now. Loan modifications are not working, and the banks are picking off homes here in California one by one. We demand an immediate halt pending the investigation. Otherwise, the bleeding will continue and it will be too late for many.

The foreclosures are causing huge losses in revenue to the State of California, its communities and creating hardship to millions of citizens. A foreclosure in any one of our neighborhoods, hurts us all. The courts are clogged with foreclosures cases in a judicial system that is almost broken due to lack of funds.

Foreclosure is not just a metaphorical epidemic, but a bona fide public health crisis. When breadwinners become ill, they miss work, lose their jobs, face daunting medical bills — and have trouble making mortgage payments as a result. The other costs of foreclosure include medical costs, loss of productivity at the work place and other intangibles.

We are requesting that Sacramento halt all foreclosures here in California pending the criminal investigation. We don't have any more time to waste. This halt is needed to provide a uniform and equitable administration of the foreclosure crisis. We petition for an immediate stop to the harvesting of homes by banks in California in the interim.

By signing this petition, we show support to you, our California leaders, in your recent bold action to reject settlement proposals with the banks because it short changed California and provided too little in terms of compensation. Attorney General Kamala Harris said she was bowing out of the talks because "the nation's five largest mortgage servicers were not offering California homeowners relief commensurate to what people in the state had suffered." (See Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2011, California breaks from 50-state probe into mortgage lenders, by Alejandro Lazo).

In some instances, these foreclosures run counter to hundreds of years of real property law. Some hundreds of thousands of California home loans were securitized on Wall Street and the loans on these properties have already been paid off. We cannot stop this tsunami of a crisis as individuals. However we urge you, as our leaders and representatives to do so NOW on our behalf.

On March 29, 2011, the United States of America, Department of the Treasury, Comptroller of the Currency issued the following Consent Order with Bank of America on April 13, 2011. This Consent Order is now in place ordering Bank of America and several other banks to cease and desist their predatory lending practices regarding residential mortgages.

This quote appeared in an article on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle on April 14, 2011:

Going forward, banks may no longer simultaneously proceed with both loan modification and foreclosures. That 'dual track' process resulted in many cases where homeowners who were making trial loan modification payments suddenly had their homes repossessed. Banks must establish a single point of contact - either one person or a team -for homeowners seeking assistance. Many struggling homeowners say they had Kafkaesque experiences over and over again.

Yet Banks such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo have failed to comply and continue to institute foreclosures all the while stating that they are on a "loan modification" track with consumers. Indeed, these banks should be immediately restrained from doing business in California and profiting thereby until regulators can investigate their business practices.

Despite a cease and desist order in place from the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DIVISION OF THE US TREASURY DEPARTMENT, these practices are happening daily in California in blatant violation of the law.

We urge you all as our esteemed elected leaders, to grant this petition for an immediate moratorium on ALL foreclosures in California until a uniform system of dealing with this crisis is enacted. We applaud the Coalition for Fair Settlement that stood up with our Attorney General to reject a settlement proposal on a national level with the banks because it would have short changed the State of California.

IN SUM, WE NEED, DEMAND AND IMPLORE YOUR IMMEDIATE ACTION TODAY - NOT TOMORROW OR IN A MONTH. ONE FORECLOSURE HURTS US ALL. WE SUPPORT EMERGENCY ACTION AND A MORATORIUM ON ALL FORECLOSURES IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA UNTIL A FAIR A SETTLEMENT AND EQUITABLE COMPENSATION IS REACHED.

I just signed the following petition addressed to: Governor Brown, Lt. Gov. Newsom, Attorney General Harris.
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Sincerely,

[Your name]