Dear Attorney General Schneiderman, 

I am a resident of the Incorporated Village of Mastic Beach in Suffolk County, NY on Long Island. I am writing to you about my concerns regarding the 300+ vacant and blighted homes in my community that are the result of past predatory lending practices. Most of these homes have been foreclosed and vacant for over a decade. As a result, a majority of them now pose a public health hazard due to infestation and mold. This is devastating to our community and is negatively impacting the quality of life for our residents. The fear of potential illness from being exposed to toxic mold or possible contact with a rabid animal that has taken up residence in a blighted home, prevents nearby homeowners from allowing their children outside to play in their own yards. 

Our Village officials have reached out to various government agencies and suggested numerous courses of action to alleviate this problem. Possible solutions include: 1) Working with New York Rising to relocate Sandy-devastated homeowners who currently reside in the extreme risk flood zones into these renovated/rehabilitated foreclosed homes that are out of the flood zone;

2) Arranging land swaps with developers who own properties in the wetlands. Developers could swap their current land for a blighted property to renovate/rehabilitate. This would allow the wetland parcel to remain undeveloped and improve storm resiliency. In addition, it would afford the Village the properties' sewer credits to help spur economic development; and 3) Condemnation and razing of the most severely damaged homes. 

I am reaching out to you and your office to alert you to what the banks continue to do to ruin our community. Some examples of their unscrupulous practices are: a) Continuing to hold these properties while playing games with the titles and mortgages. This includes foreclosing on properties while leaving the title in the names of the original mortgage holders; b) Selling/transferring the properties to other mortgage holders to avoid fines and fees for not maintaining their properties; c) Foreclosing on a tenant-occupied properties without requiring the tenants to vacate the home. This often turns into a situation where squatters occupy the residence and leads to unsafe and unsanitary living conditions that affect the entire area; and

d) Continuing to hold onto properties for the value of the inflated pre-recession loss instead of the current market value. 

We are aware that your office has received hundreds of millions of dollars in fines from these banks and mortgage companies because of their illegal predatory lending practices. These are the same predatory lending practices that continue to destroy our community. We implore you to please take some of these funds and use them to help restore our Village. We are the ones paying the price and suffering as a result of their illegal activities and we feel that we should be the ones to benefit from the collection of fines. 

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.

CC: T. Bishop; C. Schumer; K. Gillibrand; E.Hennessey; L. Zeldin; A. Cuomo; S. Bellone; K. Browning; E. Romain; D. Panico