Group petitions bank to drop foreclosure lawsuit

LYNN – Protesters demonstrated outside Eastern Bank Thursday before delivering a petition that asks the bank to drop a lawsuit against a city foreclosure-mediation ordinance.”We’re asking Eastern Bank to live up to its slogan,” Isaac Hodes of Lynn United for Change said Thursday on Market Street. “If you’re really true to the community, stop your lawsuit against the city of Lynn.”Eastern Bank spokesman Andrew Ravens said the city’s ordinance will have unintended effects.”The protesters’ hearts and minds are in the right place, but what’s proposed will ultimately do more harm than good,” Ravens said in a statement. “If every city and town is allowed to create their own lending laws, banks will flee Massachusetts and fewer people will be able to obtain a mortgage.”Approved in 2013, the city’s mediation ordinance requires banks to reach out to property owners who are behind on their mortgages and give homeowners a chance to meet with a bank representative and work out a way to avoid losing their home.Seven banks, including Eastern Bank in Lynn, joined together in late June and asked the U.S. District Court in Worcester to declare the foreclosure ordinance in Lynn, and a similar ordinance in Worcester, invalid and unconstitutional.Ravens said the action against the city was “simply to request the court delay the implementation of Lynn’s ordinance until the constitutionality of these types of laws can be determined by the Federal District Court.”But city officials, as well as members of Lynn United for Change, have moved ahead and begun implementing the ordinance.The group gathered outside Eastern Bank’s branch on Market Street for a rally then went inside and presented a petition that asks Eastern Bank to drop the lawsuit against the city. Hodes said approximately 160 people had signed the copies of the petition that are circulating throughout the community. He said that about half of the signers indicated they were directly affected by foreclosure and approximately a quarter said they were Eastern Bank customers.”We didn’t know we were in foreclosure,” resident and protester Julie Carroca said. “We didn’t even know where our mortgage was. The first time we found out, we were sitting with (Hodes) and a lawyer.”Julie and John Carroca said that about two years ago, the mortgage on their two-family home on Eastern Avenue was sold to another bank. The couple tried to take the opportunity to renegotiate the mortgage ? “but that’s when the trouble began,” Julie Carroca said.The second bank offered to modify the mortgage, but offered the couple a rate they said was unaffordable. The mortgage would eventually be sold three more times, the Carrocas said. They said they tried to talk with their new lenders, and ended up speaking with people in Mexico, Uruguay and India.Meanwhile, they said they put the money for their mortgage in an escrow account.They found out they were in foreclosure (and which bank owned their mortgage) when they met with Hodes and a lawyer working with the group. They are now volunteers with the group.”Lynn has tons of empty homes,” Julie Carroca said. “People just walked away because they didn’t know about this.”