Apartment dwellers also victimized by foreclosures

Toussaint Losier

When Rafael Matos of Dorchester received an eviction notice on June 30, he was shocked and confused. In four years of living in his Brook Avenue apartment, he had not missed a rent payment. Moreover, he had not received any complaints from his landlord.

What he did not know was that his landlord had defaulted on the mortgage, and that Deutsche Bank had foreclosed on the property.

“I didn’t know they sold the house,” said Matos, explaining that all he received from the bank was a notice to vacate. A week later, they disconnected his electricity.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I was innocent.”

Matos and 40 other tenants and community activists picketed last week outside Deutsche Bank’s One Beacon Street offices to call attention to the plight of tenants who are being evicted through mortgage foreclosure. City Councilors Chuck Turner, Charles Yancey, Felix Arroyo and Sam Yoon, as well as a representative from City Councilor Mike Ross’ office, joined the protestors, demanding to speak to bank officials.

“The foreclosures we see today are just the tip of the iceberg,” explained Turner. “We need to come together to create precedents. Deutsche Bank, take some of the pressure off of others who will be in the same situation, come forward and see that economic justice is done.”

In a statement released prior to last week’s picket, Deutsche Bank said it was not responsible for the evictions and that it was only a “trustee” whose responsibility is “largely an administrative one.”

Deutsche Bank could not be reached for further comment.

As the councilors tried to enter the building, security officials blocked the door and refused to let them inside Deutsche Bank’s offices. Over the phone, Ted Meyer, the bank’s media relations official, told the councilors that the local branch was not qualified to discuss the mortgage situation.

When Turner asked Meyer to have officials come to Boston to meet with tenants about their problems, he refused, though he did agree to have bank officials speak with tenants and housing rights advocates on a conference call.

“I’m going to tell them to stop the eviction because I don’t want to be another homeless person,” explained Matos, who is still in his apartment while challenging the eviction order in court. “They are millionaires. They don’t care about us. They don’t care about me, but I’m a hardworking man.”

While the nation’s housing crisis continues to attract attention, much of the discussion has focused on small homeowners stuck with unaffordable subprime loans — with very little consideration given to the situations faced by tenants like Matos.

“The number of foreclosure cases is startling,” said Maureen E. McDonagh, a lawyer and clinical instructor at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School. “Just because the landlord defaulted on the mortgage, the consequence is for tenants who didn’t do anything wrong.

“The other problem is the bank takes over and doesn’t do anything about conditions, or the water gets shut off, or the electricity gets shut off,” she continued. “Tenants are just completely left in the dark.”

There is no law that requires landlords to notify tenants when their buildings have come under new ownership as a result of foreclosure.

Steve Meacham, a tenant organizer for City Life/Vida Urbana, said he was surprised to learn that more than half of the buildings facing foreclosure are owned by absentee landlords.

Closer investigation by Meacham revealed that Deutsche Bank has foreclosed on the mortgages of 115 houses in the last two years.

“That means that the foreclosing entity is evicting people en masse,” said Meacham. “The mortgage is held with someone else and sold to Deutsche Bank, and then they say they don’t have any responsibility.”

According to Meacham, residents of 116 Brook Avenue in Dorchester and 275 Humboldt Avenue in Roxbury received eviction notices after Deutsche Bank foreclosed on their building.

In both cases, Deutsche Bank raised rents by transferring utilities. Some eviction notices have told tenants they must leave the building by a certain date, even though, as McDonagh pointed out, “You don’t have to leave unless a judge tells you to leave.”

Other tenants have been offered money to move out by a certain date, with as much as $500 being offered in moving expenses from a company called Cash for Keys.

Following the protest, Meacham said that City Life will be working with tenants to demand that Deutsche Bank stop all evictions. Councilor Turner also called for Deutsche Bank to stop evicting its tenants and to work with local community development corporations to create affordable housing. Furthermore, he suggested that Deutsche Bank and other lending institutions review and renegotiate troubled loans.

Turner also pointed out the need for legislation at the state level that would review each foreclosure to ensure that the mortgage was prepared properly.

“This whole foreclosure situation is one where the community and elected officials need to come together,” said Turner. “We need to sit down with these financial institutions and try to resolve the situation so that low- and moderate-income folks are not further assaulted economically.”

While David Grossman of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau said his organization has been fighting to keep tenants from losing their homes because of building foreclosure, he admits that his group’s work amounts to “just a drop in the bucket.”

“The only way to deal with this is collective bargaining,” he said.

For his part, Matos urged others who might be facing eviction to seek legal help and assistance from tenant organizations.

“The big landlords, they don’t know you exist,” he said.