A Los Angeles-area woman and her severely disabled daughter were forced to flee their home of 25 years in a matter of minutes, allegedly in large part because of Bank of America.
Dirma Rodriguez fell behind on her payments after taking out a loan to renovate her house, the Los Angeles Times reports. The reason for the renovation? Rodriguez's daughter needed to better accomodate her daughter, who has cerebral palsy. BofA modified her loan, but then sold the house to a flipper at a foreclosure auction, who moved to evict her.
There's still hope though. After the Occupy Fights Foreclosure movement intervened, BofA said it's considering giving Rodriguez a loan modification that would give her her home back.
Though tragic, Rodriguez's story isn't that unusual for a variety of reasons. First of all, despite a pledge from President Obama in 2009 that his Home Affordable Modification Program would help 3 to 4 million struggling homeowners, there have only been 768,773 active permanent modifications as of last month. That means millions of homeowners are still having trouble paying off their loans with little hope in sight to stave off foreclosure.
Secondly, Rodriguez isn't the first homeowner that's needed the intervention of the Occupy movement to keep her house. Helen Bailey, an elderly Civil Rights Era-activist, will now be able to stay in her Nashville, Tennessee home, thanks in larger part to Occupy Nashville and other organizations who started an online petition and ultimately convinced JPMorgan Chase not to foreclose on Bailey's home.
Finally, BofA has a history of foreclosing on homeowners under unusual circumstances. Earlier this week Atlanta homeowner Pamela Flores accused the bank of foreclosing on her home even after bank officials advised her to skip payments. Last year, BofA threatened to foreclose on an elderly Florida couple after they paid their bill too early. In addition, one Texas man was faced with the prospect last year that BofA would foreclose on his home, which was already destroyed in Hurricane Ike.
But in what is perhaps one of the saddest cases, a quadriplegic man living in Oregon has been battling with banks, including BofA, to keep his home since 2003.
Check out some of the biggest foreclosure fails in recent months:
