Battling cancer is difficult enough without your mortgage lender deciding to foreclose on your home just weeks after saying it was trying to help. Yet that appears to be what’s happening to Cindi Davis, a North Carolina woman diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.
Back in July, Davis's struggle to keep her home after falling behind on her mortgage payments due to her medical bills became a national story, appearing on The Huffington Post and elsewhere. After the media scrutiny, it seemed Wells Fargo, her lender, had relented on foreclosing on Davis, and the bank even wrote a letter to a local radio station indicating it was seeking "assistance" from nonprofit organizations for her, the Charlotte Observer reports.
But it appears Wells Fargo has had a change of heart: The bank now has set the foreclosure auction date for Davis's home for Dec. 19, less than a week before Christmas.
"I don’t know what to do at this point,” Davis, who said the news brought her to tears for the first time “in a long time,” told WCNC. “I mean, it’s not much, but it’s been mine for eight years and it’s where [my husband and I] built a life together," she said of the house.
Sadly, cases of cancer patients facing foreclosure are fairly common. Most recently, Detroit single mother of two Kelly Parker made headlines for vandalizing her own home in an attempt to stave off its sale at auction, after she was diagnosed with brain and lung cancer.
Not long before, Texas homeowner Alicia Ramirez was threatened with eviction by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, her loan provider, when she fell behind on her payments due medical bills resulting from the cancer that claimed her late husband.
But there is hope for those facing the trials of both cancer and eviction. Earlier this year, a North Carolina cancer patient avoided being kicked out of her rental after local television stations contacted her landlord on her behalf. Likewise, a Seattle cancer survivor and her husband avoided foreclosure after getting a lawyer involved.
Whether Davis will be so lucky, however, may depend on a hearing currently scheduled for November.
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