Showdown Looms In Elderly Predatory Loan Victim's Decade-Plus Battle To Hang On To Brooklyn Home Of 44 Years

In Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, the New York Daily News reports:

• Feisty great-grandmother Mary Lee Ward has been battling to keep her modest Brooklyn house since the late 1990s.(1) The victim of a predatory subprime mortgage lender that went bankrupt in the housing crash four years ago, Ward has nearly lost the Bedford-Stuyvesant home a number of times - and faces eviction yet again on Friday. "There is no way I'm going to leave this place. Not alive," said a teary-eyed Ward. "This is my home for 44 years. I've put everything into it."



• Ward, 82, was desperate for extra money back in 1995 to pay for a lawyer to help keep her great-granddaughter from being adopted. Ward found a flyer in her mailbox from Delta Funding, a subprime mortgage lender, promising her a cash advance of $10,000 if she borrowed against her one-family frame house on Tompkins Ave.



• Ward signed. She said she has seen only $1,000 of the cash she was promised and has been in and out of courtrooms battling banks - and even her own lawyers - for more than a decade. She thought her home was safe after Delta Funding sent her a letter in 2001 saying they would cancel the loan. Ward says what she didn't know was that Delta Funding never rescinded the loan, and that banks have been playing hot potato with her mortgage for years.



• The company was sued by the feds in 1999 for civil rights violations for targeting minority-group members - especially black women - in Queens and Brooklyn. The company went bankrupt in 2007, along with many other subprime lenders. But Ward's house remained in limbo.



• She says the latest owner, 768 Dean Inc., bought her home at a foreclosure auction last September. "They're trying to throw me out and I have nowhere to go," Ward said. She said she received 18 eviction letters in the mail just on Aug. 6. Representatives of 768 Dean Inc. could not be reached for comment.



• Ward, who lives on $840 a month from Social Security, says her $82,000 loan has now morphed into a debt of $200,000.



• She huddled with her new legal team, lawyers for the grass-roots group Common Law, late last week to talk strategy. Legally, there's nothing they can do, but they're hoping they can rally people together for next Friday's showdown with city marshals, representatives of the group said.(2)



• "We're hoping that with the support of her neighbors and fellow New Yorkers, she'll be able to get some bargaining power back," said Common Law lawyer Karen Gargamelli. Ward said she tosses and turns every night and looks forward to the day when she can rest easy. "Just let me have a little peace," she said.

For the story, see Great-granny, facing eviction from Brooklyn home, to fight in court for right to live in peace.

(1) See:

• The Village Voice: Foreclosing on Bed-Stuy (Predatory Loans Have Residents Seeing Red),
• The Village Voice: Liberals On Loan (Lender that preys on poor fights the state­ with help from leading democrats).

(2) In addition, housing advocates at Organizing 4 Occupation are working to block the eviction of Ms. Ward. The showdown with city marshals is set for Friday, August 19, 2011 at 9:00 am at 320 Tompkins Avenue, Brooklyn, USA.