Jennah Ferrara, 2010
I lost my apartment once, but it wasn't because the shabby railroad flat grew feet and ran to make new friends in downtown Pittsburgh. My landlord became one of the many Americans facing foreclosure, and there I was.
This happened the same week Illinois Sen. Barack Obama accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party. That fact is pertinent because on May 25, President Obama signed the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, Title VII of the Saving Families at Foreclosure Act of 2009. I will not only explore the crisis of foreclosure and the new laws available to defend tenants but will also illustrate the value of other resources available to people with disabilities confronting housing dilemmas. (Since my housing misadventure predated Obama's presidency, I relied on the thoughtful and expert advice of Paul O'Hanlon, the staff attorney at the Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania.)
Dig if you will a picture. It's July 2008 and my landlord ("Mr. Potter," in homage to It's a Wonderful Life) is waking me at 7 a.m. by banging on my window. Potter, who attempts to offset late middle-age by dyeing his hair an improbable shade between pink and orange, informs me, "Appraisers are coming soon to assess the building. Will you tell them your rent is higher than it really is?"
Sure, I said, going right back to sleep. Gullibility, thy name is Jennah. There I was, trying to help a landlord I tried my best not to contact if something needed to be fixed because he had hired an elderly man with a paralyzed leg as a handyman.
Initially, I assumed this visit from appraisers just had something to do with taxes. But later I wrote in my journal, "Will it be up for sale very soon or what? Not that I shouldn't move, but I'm knackered and can't even think about it. But who's going to buy a beaten-down building in this economy anyway?"
I'll tell you who: Mr. Potter's sons, "Mutt" and "Jeff," who surprised everyone by moving back home to start their own real-estate empire. On August 4th I received a letter informing me they were the new owners. The new lease was also in the envelope, and if I chose to continue living in my apartment, my rent would be 75 percent higher. It would be impossible for me to stay in my home.
Yes, I was naïve. Since I had been a good tenant for more than ten years, I had assumed Potter was an almost avuncular sort who would have made sure I'd have more than 28 days to make alternate arrangements after he foreclosed and his sons bought the building. He knew I was poor. He knew I had disabilities. He knew it wouldn't be easy for me to find and move to a new place. Why hadn't he warned me?
Even though I'd lived independently almost exclusively since 1988, I had forgotten something very important: he had no legal responsibility to be nice to me.
A month later I finally met Mutt, who was emptying the basement of the mountains of unclaimed trash abandoned by a parade of renters leading back to the Civil War. The conglomeration of overflowing cardboard boxes, defunct appliances and stained mattresses had blocked me from unfolding my wheelchair ramp and going outside.
"I'm not going to move this," he said when I first asked him to clear me a path. An hour later, he sullenly agreed to move some of the refuse but made sure to let me know that, "I'm a businessman, not a charity case like you."
Ouch. Way to hack at my Achilles heel with the rusty band saw left behind by a former tenant. To him I wasn't an industrious person who had lost the part-time job she loved because she couldn't predict when she'd recover from a particularly nasty MS exacerbation. I was only a "charity case" who didn't deserve to be able to leave her own apartment to buy a copy of the Post-Gazette. Well then.
And that, dear reader, was when I did a Cask of Amontillado on his sorry ass and built a brick wall around him in the aforementioned basement.
Not really. Receiving assistance from a disability-rights organization was what really happened. Lawyers, advocates and other staff at these agencies can assist people with disabilities who are confronting housing problems. The National Disability Rights Network links people with appropriate community resources at www.napas.org.
Foreclosures have blindsided an unknown number of Americans, some of whom have resorted to squatting in their former homes until they are forced to leave. On December 15 last year, Alisa Roth reported on Marketplace from American Public Media how difficult it is to gauge the extent of this crisis, since somewhere between five and eight million properties are in some state of foreclosure.
Andrew McCulloch is an analyst who provides real estate information to investors. Through combining and interpreting information from RealtyTrac (a company that tracks foreclosure listings), government agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and groups such as the Mortgage Bankers Association, McCulloch said he and financial advisors like him "try to combine and interpret what they're all saying at any given time over a certain time period."
The length of time involved in foreclosures differs from state to state, which compounds the difficulty of analyzing the extent of the number of houses involved.
Regardless of this confusion, Realtytrac did record a decrease of 21 percent in November of last year. Building on this positive financial flow, I'll conclude my discussion of tenant rights with the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act I mentioned earlier. Under the Act, tenants have 90 days to find new housing if they are on month-to-month leases or if the new owner intends to use the property as a primary residence. Tenants with lease agreements are permitted to stay in their homes until the lease runs out. For more information about tenants' rights at foreclosure see NoLo.com or HUD. You can also view the entire text of the Saving Families at Foreclosure Act here.
So where did I end up? In a little bungalow, possibly the smallest in the South Side Flats, an area known for multi-level older houses. It's perfect. The house is less than 1000 square feet, with ivy replacing the grass someone else would have had to mow. The small size is not only newly fashionable, but the walls and furniture catch me when I lose my balance if I lurch about like Baby Huey. I even have my own library and a dishwasher.
I was especially fortunate because my mother refinanced her home to buy a house I could rent from her. (Trust me: I didn't grow up entitled, and I never expected this to happen.)
I never saw Mr. Potter or his sons again. Maybe Mutt and Jeff used some of the profits of their real-estate empire to treat their father to a retirement in Hawaii, where his striking hair would be indistinguishable from the vibrant tropical flora and fauna.
Jennah Ferrara teaches creative writing part-time and is enjoying her activities with the Slow Movement/Sloth Club in more peaceful surroundings.
(Footnote: Mutt's brother Jeff was pleasant and reasonable. After I had devised their aliases, I discovered "Mutt and Jeff" is also British military slang for what we call good cop/bad cop in the United States.)
Special thanks to Paul O'Hanlon, Esq., for tirelessly and kindly steering me through a time of medical and emotional upheaval with his legal expertise.
