Lynn residents ride bus for Cambridge protest

LYNN – More than 30 Lynn residents joined a regional protest at Chase Bank in Cambridge on Wednesday evening to draw attention to what they say is the bank’s refusal to help Massachusetts residents stay in their homes.The Lynn residents – many of them fighting foreclosures themselves – boarded a bus in downtown Lynn armed with red-and-white signs to join residents from Chelsea, Boston, Brockton and Framingham aiming to put pressure on the bank to work with homeowners facing foreclosures.Read a letter from Garcia and Rivera’s son to Chase Bank.One impetus for the protest is a Lynn family who is facing foreclosure from Chase Bank despite having the cash on hand to buy back their home, said Suzanne Hodes, an organizer with activist group Lynn United For Change, which organized the Lynn branch of the protest.Hodes said Santiago Garcia and Celeste Rivera have worked with a Boston nonprofit lender, which has offered to buy the home from Chase Bank at the current market value and sell it back to Garcia and Rivera.But Chase Bank has refused the offer and continues to try and evict them, she said.”This is a way to keep people in their homes at fair market value,” she said Wednesday while boarding the bus. “No one’s trying to get off without paying their mortgage.”Hodes said many people have a misconception that homeowners like Garcia and Rivera are facing foreclosure because they bought a house they couldn’t have afforded in the first place.But she said many homeowners were tricked into predatory loans and inflated pricing as the result of a housing bubble created by mortgage companies selling too many mortgages at once.”The only way to buy a house in Lynn was for an extremely inflated value,” she said of the housing situation as recently as 2008. “(Mortgage companies) created a false price and they made it affordable for everybody.”Chana Seaforth of Lynn said that’s exactly what happened to her when she bought her first home several years ago in Lynn.”It was my first house,” she said. “I had no clue.”After successfully fighting foreclosure, Seaforth said she went to Cambridge to protest for the Garcia/Rivera family to let them know that they’re not alone.”So now I’m here to help others get their home back,” she said.Marina Paulino of Lynn hasn’t had as much success warding off foreclosure on her Lynn home. But she said she still took time to head to Cambridge on Wednesday to support other people struggling.”Because we’re all in the same situation,” she said.Rivera said Wednesday that’s what she hopes Chase Bank officials will realize after the protest.”I hope they know it’s not just me, it’s many people who are in this situation,” she said.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].