The region may be leading the way in the country’s economic recovery, but in the Manassas neighborhood of Georgetown South, the foreclosure crisis is still very real. Nearly one out of every three homes there is in foreclosure and still others are on the verge.
At a rally Sunday attended by roughly 250 people, homeowners told horror stories of toiling with countless bank representatives and lost paperwork only to get denied mortgage modifications. The event, hosted by VOICE (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement), was the kickoff to a campaign that demands financial institutions streamline the mortgage modification process and create a dollar fund to rebuild devastated communities.
“Our neighborhood has seen almost 300 foreclosures in the last few years,” homeowner Leslie Jones said, according to an account of the event. “Our neighborhood went through a depression. Friends disappeared. Homes stood vacant inviting drug dealers and other crime. Investors scooped up properties cheaply, and become slum landlords barely maintaining the properties and threatening tenants.”
The dramatic drop in home prices in the county has left many people underwater on their homes.
Dale City resident Edgar Lemus said he’d never missed a mortgage payment in 10 years. But one year after getting a loan modification in October 2009, he got a letter from his bank stating he hadn’t sent in the paperwork to make the modification final and he owed $26,000.
“It did not make sense,” Lemus said. “We made every payment on time, and we followed the bank’s directions. We talked to countless people from Chase. One Chase official even told me he could see our signed paperwork in the bank’s online system, so he did not understand what happened.”
