The Rev. Dale Shotts speaks at a March 10 rally in Washington calling on Congress to reform bankruptcy laws. UMNS photos courtesy of the PICO Network.

A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*
March 11, 2009

As a community organizer in Kansas City, the Rev. Dale Shotts has firsthand experience of the effects of home foreclosures on families and neighborhoods.

“People are losing their homes because our nation has made a god of excessive profits, and we have not listened to the voice of real prophets of many faith traditions,” declared Shotts, who is director of social justice ministries at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church and a leader of “Communities Creating Opportunity” in Kansas City.

In order for the new foreclosure guidelines from the Obama administration to work, Congress must pass bankruptcy reform, according to PICO. The organization wants Congress to change the bankruptcy code to allow homeowners – especially the victims of predatory lending -- the right to ask a bankruptcy judge to modify their loans if their banks refuse to work with them.

Saving family homes

The caravan started its journey from Antioch, Calif., continuing to Aurora/Denver and Kansas City. Shotts, who joined a 45-passenger bus in Kansas City, said the riders sang, prayed and read Scriptures between stops in Springfield, Ill., Chicago, Flint, Mich., and Camden, N.J., on the way to Washington.

“This express bus was stopping in the cities that have the most foreclosures in the nation,” he explained. Flint, for example, is still recovering from the last housing crisis 20 years ago, he said.

“Our message was that we want to keep families in their homes,” Shotts added. Bankruptcy judges must have the ability to modify people’s mortgages “so they have a hearing, instead of being notified just a few days before being evicted,” he said.

Pointing to the harm that the foreclosure crisis is having upon children, he called mortgage modification and reform “a just value, a moral value, a human right and a family value.”

The Rev. Cory Sparks, pastor of Faith Community United Methodist Church in Youngsville, La., who came to Washington to participate in the March 10 rally, pointed out that the strength of the nation rests on the strength of its families.

Passage of Senate bill 61 “could save 800,000 homes, according to a recent PICO study,” Sparks said. “These foreclosures rip apart neighborhoods.”

Mary Rabon, a member of St. James United Methodist Church who lives in the southeast part of Kansas City, sees plenty of empty houses in her neighborhood. “Right next door to me is a foreclosed property that’s been sitting empty since about September,” she said.

The house was dismantled, piece by piece, and became the site of illegal trash dumping, but it took a press conference and the help of a city council member to get the trash removed. “It’s just getting worse and worse,” added Rabon, who is a neighborhood leader with Communities Creating Opportunity. “It’s really scary because these (vacant) houses are dark. You don’t know who is in there.”

A personal battle

For Rabon, the results of the mortgage crisis have become even more personal. “I’m fighting a foreclosure battle myself,” she said. “I know a lot of people who are.”

PICO and CCO made it possible for her to travel to the Washington rally and tell her story, and she hoped the 300-odd people who assembled there would have an impact. “We know that we’re bringing the truth to Washington,” she declared. “We’re asking them (Congress) to act on that.”

Sparks, who has been involved with PICO on a national level since 2005, said the organization has a strong track record. “After Katrina, when we didn’t know where money would come from to rebuild the city of New Orleans, the PICO network stepped up,” he said. “Unfortunately, the voices of our communities aren’t often heard in the halls of power. The faith voice, in particular, brings a strong presence.”

The PICO National Network is a coalition of 1,000 congregations. To learn more about its foreclosure campaign, visit http://www.piconetwork.org/keepfamiliesinhomes.

*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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