‘Complete nightmare’ says mother left homeless after foreclosure – people who intended to fix sewage problem sold her house

A MOTHER was forced out of her home after a charity said it would help repair her house but instead sold it for thousands.

Rachel Yancey and her family felt like a mess after learning their home was going to be renovated, but instead they were left homeless.

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“It was a complete nightmare,” Yancey told Detroit Free Press in 2018.

In 2016, the Black Caucus Foundation of Michigan wanted to give squatters a chance to own homes.

This could only happen if the Detroit City Council allowed the foundation to purchase 200 occupied homes from the land bank.

Squatters are people who live in homes they don’t own, and many of them lived in the 3,600 homes along the land bank, according to the outlet.

Rather than evict squatters and increase Michigan’s homeless population, the foundations told the board they would “rehabilitate and affordably sell fully renovated land contract homes to qualified occupants of the properties.”

To do this, they created a subsidiary, Bridges to Homeownership, but that’s where things went wrong.

Bridges evicted some squatters before obtaining the deeds to the houses, which was considered wrong.

The 29 homes were purchased for $1,000 each, but some were sold for thousands of dollars while people were still living inside.

In 2018, just six homes were sold to squatters, which was below the group’s initial goal of buying and selling 1,800 homes per year.

BROKEN PROMISES

Yancey was thrown into the mess after being evicted from a home she lost to foreclosure.

The resident and her husband Carl Payne were unable to pay taxes and lost their home in 2014, but they stayed.

When the proposal was initially offered, Yancey said Bridges gave them two options; leave the house and get $900 for moving expenses, or stay and let Bridges fix up and sell the house for them.

They chose the latter option and began paying $850 a month in rent during the renovation process.

However, when approached to buy the house for $57,000, they decided not to do so due to a rat infestation and raw sewage in the basement.

What does it mean for a house to be placed in foreclosure

Foreclosures can happen when lenders take control of a property after borrowers have failed to make their payments.

Homeowners or borrowers will receive a Notice of Default from their lender, triggering the foreclosure process.

Those in HOA communities may also find their homes foreclosed by their HOA for late fees, meaning that even if you continue your mortgage payments, you could still lose your home.

Before foreclosure, an HOA will place a lien on your property, which will allow it to be auctioned off to recover unpaid funds.

The property’s sales price can often be much less than it is worth, as it only needs to be enough to cover debts owed to the HOA or lender and is sold at auction to the highest bidder.

The couple stopped paying the rent and their marriage was in shambles.

“We grew apart,” Payne said.

“I was living with a friend, homeless for a while. It was crazy.”

“Having to vacate the house, we eventually had to go our separate ways because we had nowhere to go together,” Yancey said.

‘BETRAYED’

Although more questions like Yancey’s began to emerge, Erica Ward Gerson, president of the land bank’s board, defended Bridges.

“I believe they are achieving our goal, which is to allow these people to stay in their homes or at least put their homes back into productive use,” she said in an interview, according to the outlet.

However, the land bank is also responsible for the now evicted squatters.

There is no record of contacting residents of 13 homes to inform them that they could purchase the properties for $1,000.

Yancey and her husband were part of the group that was left out.

Gerson said the program was offered to people in late 2015, initially to people who “called us.”

It was a complete nightmare.

Rachel Yancey

However, land bank records show that Yancey contacted the land bank asking how to stay in the house, according to the outlet.

She was told there were no guarantees, but “it will be taken into consideration that she is living there.”

The house was sold to Bridges in May 2016.

“I definitely feel betrayed,” Payne said.

Yancey recalled the man, KB Stallworth, who initially talked to the couple about their plan to save their home in late 2015.

“I kind of feel like they sent the African-American guy because we’re like an urban community, so I felt like they sent him to communicate with us first, just because we would accept him more easily and wouldn’t really ask too many questions. because, you know, the way he spoke and presented himself, we thought it was a reputable organization,” she said.

“So because we couldn’t contact the land bank, or we tried and didn’t get any feedback, you know, we’re like OK, the Black Caucus organization, we’re assuming he’s trying to help, so that’s what we went to. “

The US Sun has previously written about foreclosures, including one woman’s home that sold for $3.25 million even after she paid off an outstanding debt.