As Maryland continues to rack up foreclosures at a record pace, civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson came to Baltimore on Monday to rally support for a protest Tuesday in Washington D.C., seeking federal assistance for distressed homeowners.
Appearing before a packed house at Bethel AME Church on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Jackson said the mortgage crisis was undermining families, particularly in the black community.
“We need to march on Washington and demand our government stop foreclosures and subprime lending,” Jackson said.
Jackson?s Rainbow Coalition has been seeking a nationwide moratorium on interest rates for adjustable-rate mortgages ? loans that begin with low introductory interest rates that rise, sometimes nearly doubling, after the loans “reset.”
“We believe eight years of subprime lending will cost $164 billion in losses to people of color,” he said. “This is the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern history.
“It?s easy to talk about King?s dream, but the dream is costly.”
In Maryland, the number of home foreclosures has continued to climb ? nearly doubling in the past year.
The continued erosion of the state?s housing market prompted Gov. Martin O?Malley to propose legislation in the state assembly providing more protections for homeowners.
“It?s an unprecedented crisis,” O?Malley has said.
Jackson, in his trademark cadence, called for lenders to “restructure loans, not repossess homes.”
Baltimore City recently filed a lawsuit against mortgage lender Wells Fargo alleging the company engaged in a practice called “reverse red-lining,” in which banks target minority neighborhoods with higher-priced loans. City officials said the practice lead to a foreclosure rate four times higher in predominantly black neighborhoods than majority-white neighborhoods.
Jackson called for one city in each state to file a lawsuit against the major mortgage lenders to recover loss tax revenue.
In addition, he said: “The merger of Countrywide and Bank of America should be challenged until there is a moratorium on foreclosures.”
The Rainbow Coalition protest is scheduled from noon to 2 p.m. in front of the office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington.
Organizers said they expected several hundred people to attend.
