He put his hands on her throat, and squeezed until she couldn’t breathe. He had a gun, and a history of domestic violence against her.
All this is in the crime report.
But the gun that police found on Javonnta Simmons’ boyfriend that February day — he allegedly intended to pistol whip her — led the city of Rochester to assess nuisance points against the Genesee Street apartment building where she lived. And that, Simmons alleges in a lawsuit, forced her to move. Read more
Great news! The Housing Council was recently selected by The Genesee Brew House to receive a generous donation! The donation resulted from a philanthropic program coordinated out of the Genesee Brew House Pilot Brewery Tasting Bar. Genesee designates a portion of the proceeds from tasting fees at the Pilot Brewery Bar to benefit local charities each quarter. The Genesee Brew House focuses on four different community initiatives annually. The Housing Council and the American Heart Association were the first two organizations chosen under the first community theme of “Building a Healthy Home.” Both charities split more than $20,000.
“We chose The Housing Council because of its deep commitment to improving neighborhoods around the Brewery and in other parts of the City of Rochester,” said Rich Lozyniak, CEO of North American Breweries. “The Housing Council offers wonderful programs that promote home ownership, prevent foreclosures and educate both landlords and tenants about improving our community, one home at a time. We’re happy to give back the proceeds from our Tasting Bar to help with such important community work.”
About the Genesee Brew House:
Once a century-old packaging center, The Genesee Brew House has transformed the 9,200 square-foot space into a beer destination for upstate New York and beyond. The first floor of the Brew House features interactive exhibits, multi-media content, a gift shop and a pilot brewery complete with a tasting bar. Upstairs, there is a pub-style restaurant with a 41-foot bar (hand-crafted out of old, wooden Genesee brewing tanks), outdoor terrace seating and a rooftop patio.
The Genesee Brew House tells a story of the Genesee Brewing Company that dates back to 1878. The brewery lays claim to being one of the oldest and longest continually operating breweries in the United States. By using an eclectic mix of vintage barrels, reclaimed wood, exposed ceiling, neon signs, new technology and modern exhibits, The Brew House will bring Genny’s story alive for generations to come.
Lee Wright of Chico, Calif., had been homeless for 15 years before a positive turn of events allowed him to start living off his lifelong talent: painting. Wright originally was drawn to Chico read more
The Housing Council and PathStone Corporation join together to meet Rochester’s housing needs
ROCHESTER, NY (October 2, 2012) – The Board of Directors of the Housing Council is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement to negotiate a permanent affiliation with PathStone Corporation. PathStone will provide executive leadership and support to the staff and board while discussions are underway.
The Housing Council Board of Directors is “thrilled to develop creative, mission-driven partnership opportunities with PathStone Corporation that will integrate resources, improve administrative efficiencies and enhance our housing related services in times of great need,” states Chairperson, Karen Leonardi. “We are confident that we can negotiate the longer term affiliation agreement within the next few months.”
Stuart J. Mitchell, president & CEO of PathStone Corporation, says of the partnership, “the Housing Council has provided critically important services to Rochester and Monroe County residents for more than 40 years. Our two organizations have great respect for each other, and by creating a formal partnership, we can combine our expertise, talents and resources, further strengthening our capacity to address the housing needs of tenants, first-time homebuyers, homeowners and others.”
The negotiations and due diligence process between the Housing Council and PathStone Corporation were supported by the United Way of Greater Rochester’s Synergy Fund. Through a grant from the fund, the United Way engaged the professional services of the New York Council on Nonprofits (NYCON) to serve as a neutral third-party facilitator, as well as to provide legal services.
“We are pleased that United Way can offer assistance to PathStone and The Housing Council as they seek to work together to face challenges being experienced by many not-for-profit organizations our community,” said Peter C. Carpino, president of United Way of Greater Rochester. “These two organizations are important community assets and we know that this new collaboration will allow them to thrive and even more effectively offer service to the people of our community.”
PathStone Corporation has appointed Susan Boss to serve as Executive Director of the Housing Council. “Ms. Boss has worked for PathStone Corporation for more than 15 years, serving as the director of the PathStone First-Time Home Buyer and Mortgage Foreclosure Counseling program for 5 years,” states Mitchell. “She brings a wealth of direct program knowledge to the Housing Council and will be an excellent bridge builder between our two organizations.”
About The Housing Council
The Housing Council is a Rochester, NY based non-profit organization, providing landlord education, foreclosure prevention, pre-purchase counseling, emergency housing services and fair housing education. It is one of New York State’s largest HUD-approved comprehensive counseling agencies.
About PathStone
PathStone is a Rochester, NY based non-profit community development and human services organization, that provides services to low-income families and economically distressed communities throughout New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Vermont, and Puerto Rico. It is a NeighborWorks America Chartered Organization and a certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI).
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For more information contact:
Stuart Mitchell
585-340-3368
smitchell@pathstone.org
Proving that politicians aren’t immune to the foreclosure crisis, Arkansas’ lieutenant governor Mark Darr is facing a lawsuit filed by a bank alleging he is late on his payments, Jonesboro, Ark.
Darr claims he is not late on his payments although the lawsuit alleges he missed four consecutive payments in a row from Signature Bank of Arkansas.
The bank has filed a lawsuit in Benton County to foreclose on the Springdale home of Lt. Gov. Mark Darr, but the northwest Arkansas Republican disputes that he is in arrears.
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Lenders wanting to know the exact definition of discriminatory lending will have to wait until the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau releases its final ability-to-repay rule under the Dodd-Frank Act next January.
While the ability-to-repay rule doesn’t address discriminatory lending the way the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development does, the rule could have a disparate impact on groups that do not meet the ability-to-repay standards. And the question then becomes will those groups effected by not obtaining mortgages try to file lending discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act? This is a concern for lawyers like Richard Andreano, a partner at Ballard Spahr, who follows mortgage regulations.
“The ability-to-pay rule says be very conservative (in lending to individuals),” Andreano said. “But disparate impact is telling me to make as many loans as possible.”
To avoid ambiguity and unnecessary litigation, he hopes the agencies will coordinate their rules.
As it stands now, the ability-to-pay rule drafted by CFPB is somewhat conflicting when its put side-by-side with HUD’s version of discriminatory lending, Andreano suggests.
In late 2011, HUD proposed a final Fair Housing rule that would essentially allow discriminatory lending cases if borrowers could show a “discriminatory effect” or that one group was disparately impacted by lending practices. In other words, no actual intent to discriminate is needed as long as the disparate impact of the lending can be shown by a group, according to documents filed in the Federal Register. The recording in the Federal Register says HUD proposed the final draft of the rule “to establish uniform standards for determining when a housing practice with a discriminatory effect violates the Fair Housing Act.”
At the same time, the CFPB is working on a rule that could hit lenders hard if they issue a loan and it’s later found the borrower did not have the ability to repay. The confusion comes in when trying to decipher how a lender determines ability to pay. And if a group disparately impacted by not meeting “ability-to-repay” standards is upset, can they then sue for discrimination under HUD’s proposed rule or will the two agencies create a safe harbor protection and coordinate the two laws?
“You have here two rules, and the underlying intent is consumer protection,” Mortgage Bankers Association CEO David Stevens said at a conference in Dallas last week. “But by not coordinating the rules you can actually harm consumers by creating constraints in lending that could become a concern.”
A court case that was expected to define the scope of discriminatory lending fell through at the Supreme Court last year, and HUD is waiting to see if a similar case will be heard by the Supreme Court this year.
Will it be a lender’s “discriminatory intent” that determines a case or will it be the “discriminatory effect or outcome” of how loans are issued that constitute discrimination? The latter would lead conservative lenders trying to follow CFPB guidelines into a tight spot if the rules are not coordinated, Andreano suggests.
He says HUD has seemingly slowed down its push to define the rule as it waits to see if the Supreme Court will define it for them. But the real question is whether the “ability-to-repay” rule from the CFPB will protect lenders from what could be perceived as disparate impact on certain groups of borrowers by stipulating in its rule that loan decisions are safe from discrimination allegations as long as they are based on ability-to-repay guidelines.
Andreano says if the rules are not coordinated, the ambiguity between discriminatory lending laws and ability-to-repay provisions will encourage overly cautious lending.
“These rules will determine whether people own or rent the home they live in,” Andreano said. “Since housing is such a key part of the economy, these rules are going to determine in a large part whether homeownership is obtainable for Americans or not.”
The August jobs report showed a definite lull in the American economy, but recent home price and sales improvements are setting the stage for an even stronger housing market in 2013, according to Mike Fratantoni, vice president of research for the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Fratantoni told HousingWire the slow economic recovery may create a pipeline of first-time homebuyers. With rates and prices low, those buyers may be willing to jump into the market in the coming months, he suggested.
Fratantoni said recent data shows the U.S. economy hitting a “soft patch.” Yet, home prices are looking up in many markets after years of steep price declines, creating the momentum for additional home listings and purchases in 2013, Fratantoni told HousingWire while attending the MBA’s Risk Management and Quality Assurance Forum in Dallas.
The MBA economist noted first-time homebuyers vacated the market after taking advantage of homebuyer tax credits offered back in 2009 and 2010. Those tax credits moved first-time homebuyer sales ahead a few years, reducing overall demand as housing prices plunged to their natural bottom.
U.S. state attorneys general are pressing four banks to accept a legal settlement over botched foreclosures similar to a deal reached with larger competitors this year, according to three people briefed on the matter.
U.S. Bancorp (SFBC), PNC Financial Services Group (PNC) Inc., SunTrust Banks Inc. (STI) and HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) have held talks with state and federal officials who investigated claims that loan servicers mishandled foreclosure documents, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.
Neil Brazil, a spokesman for HSBC’s North America unit, said in an e-mail that the London-based lender has conducted “preliminary discussions with its bank regulators and other governmental agencies” and that “the timing of any settlement is not presently known.”
State attorneys general led by Tom Miller, a Democrat from Iowa, began an investigation of mortgage servicers in October 2010 after reports that practices including “robo-signing” had led to improper foreclosures. The probe led to a settlement in February among the five biggest servicers — JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Citigroup Inc. (C), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Ally Financial Inc. — and 49 states and the federal government.
Michael McCoy, a spokesman for Atlanta-based SunTrust, declined to comment, as did Frederick Solomon, a spokesman for Pittsburgh-based PNC and Tom Joyce, a spokesman for Minneapolis- based U.S. Bancorp.
The effects of the housing market collapse continue to be felt by these and other banks, not only on mortgage servicing. SunTrust said today it would set aside $375 million to repurchase faulty loans it may have originated, following PNC, which set aside $350 million in June.
The deal with the five largest mortgage servicers is valued at $25 billion, including $5 billion in payments to states and $20 billion that banks will use to compensate borrowers who lost their homes to foreclosures, forgive debt, give payment forbearances, arrange short sales and refinance mortgages at lower rates. It also specified new standards for fair servicing of mortgages. In return, the banks received limited protection from state litigation.
“The jury is still out on whether this gets fixed or whether the attorneys general will have to go after them,” Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, said in an interview.
The attorneys general made efforts to get the four smaller banks to join the February agreement — with proportionally smaller payments — before striking the deal with only the big five, one of the people briefed on the talks said.
In the last few months, the AGs have resumed the pressure on the smaller banks. In early August, they met in Washington with federal officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and 12 state attorneys general including Miller.
Mortgage servicers typically handle billing and collections, as well as foreclosures when borrowers fail to pay. The four regional banks, whose mortgage portfolios are far smaller than those of the five larger banks, say the states have yet to demonstrate that a settlement would be more beneficial than letting banks handle customers’ problems individually, according to the people briefed on the talks.
Of the four banks, U.S. Bancorp has the largest share of the mortgage servicing market, with 2.5 percent in the second quarter of 2012, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication. SunTrust had 1.5 percent, while PNC had 1.3 percent and HSBC 0.9 percent.
By contrast, Wells Fargo had 18.5 percent in the second quarter of the year, while Bank of America had 15.8 percent.
Miller spokesman Geoff Greenwood declined to comment, as did HUD’s Brian Sullivan and Adora Andy at the Department of Justice.
While the banks are resisting joining a deal, some have set aside funds for a possible settlement. Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp said in a filing for the quarter ended June 30 that it had accrued $130 million in reserves for any deal.
“If a settlement were reached it would likely include an agreement to comply with specified servicing standards, and settlement payments to governmental authorities as well as a monetary commitment that could be satisfied under various loan modification programs,” according to the filing.
Last year, HSBC — which has U.S. branches in states including Florida and New Jersey — set aside $257 million as its “estimated liability” in any settlement. PNC in January set aside $240 million for costs tied to residential mortgage foreclosures as a result of “ongoing governmental matters,” the company said in January.
Also in January, SunTrust said it couldn’t estimate the cost of any potential settlement with state attorneys general.
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