I will begin this story by acknowledging a truth. I should never have signed my name on the loan documents for my house in Sierraville, California, population 200. The biggest clue, when I went in to Eagle Mortgage in Truckee, back in February of 2007, was all the moving boxes around the office. "We're relocating," the loan officer said with the smile of an executioner delivering a last meal. Nonetheless, I sat down and signed papers the loan officer had so casually filled out with a "stated income" attributed to me of $9,000.00 per month, which was the amount I needed in order to qualify for this loan of nearly $300,000.00. But with my sweaty hand sliding down the pen, I signed them anyway. Talk about magical thinking...I imagined that maybe if I became a best-selling author and became a regular on Oprah, I could make that much money each month.
As a marriage and family therapist, I could not imagine earning that much unless I charged my clients $500.00 per session which I suppose some actually do. I decided to get a job with Sierra County as a senior mental health therapist in addition to working in private practice in order to afford my house payments of $2,000.00 per month. It was still unrealistic even with two jobs. The ink had not yet dried on the loan documents before Eagle Mortgage went out of business.
It was two years hence that I realized I was in such a hole that the only way out was to sell the house. I'd put over $60,000.00 into it which I knew I would never see in a sale. The confluence of trying to work full time with Sierra County Health and Human services under absolutely horrible working conditions, complete my PhD course work and keep my nineteen year old son from self-destructing, resulted in a major physical and emotional collapse. I left my job too physically ill and mentally battered to work, and crawled my way through the last quarter of my PhD course work with the aid of heavy anti-depressant medication, sleeping medication and daily therapy. Even then, there were many days I wished for death to take me.
My experience with Sierra County Health and Human Services was so insidiously violent that I still become nauseous when I reflect on it. It began about a month after my first day in September of 2007 when sat in my supervisor's office expecting to be given some direction on how to do the multiple jobs I was given outside of my job description. I was expecting to be given support and direction by this woman who was not only the Assistant Director, she was also a licensed member of my profession who knew the ethical codes around the supervisor/supervisee relationship. Instead of supervision, I received a detailed account of her affair with the county auditor and her impending marital break-up. Not only that, she took some sort of hideous delight in disclosing deeply personal information about other employees with the county. My heart sank as I realized her disclosures would forever poison our relationship. And I knew she would come to regret her frequent episodes of what I experienced as emotional rape and she would then make my life in my job unbearable, which she proceeded to do. And there was no remedy for me; the person with whom she was having the affair was the designated county official for handling complaints of abuse or exploitation by supervisors. My complaints to the director, the union and Sierra County were also dismissed. I was told basically not to make waves and just "let it roll off." I wish I had whatever personality trait is required to allow such abuse to "just roll of," but since I stand for protecting people against abuse of any kind in my work as a therapist and as a supervisor, I found it impossible to condone and began to suffer some severe psychological and physical effects. I still wonder how an agency whose mission it is to serve people in their physical and emotional struggles could abdicate its responsibility to protect its own employees for the sake of maintaining the status quo. I surmised that the director of this agency needed to remain in the good graces of the county auditor because he managed the money she needed to run her programs; how could she reprimand his lover?
Unfortunately, as I crawled away from Sierra County Health and Human Services with barely a shred of my sanity, the housing market simultaneously took a swan dive into the toilet.
I decided to be proactive and called the Bank of America in April of 2009 and warned them that I would no longer be able to make the $2,000.00 monthly payments as of June and requested assistance under Obama's Economic Recovery Act programs. After an hour and fifteen minutes on hold, the Bank of America told me they could not help me with a modification or any of the services offered under Obama's Economic Recovery Plan until I was at least eight months in arrears.
By June of 2009, I was well enough to work again and found a job with Inyo County for which I was hired. But because of California's budget problems they could not give me a hire date. It took me another two months to find a job which required a move away from the mountains to San Diego and a pay cut of about $15,000.00. The wait time between jobs created made my financial hole so deep I couldn't see the bottom. Eight months and a Chapter 7 bankruptcy later, I again applied for assistance with BAC's "Home Retention Team." I was given reams and reams of paperwork to fill out which I enthusiastically completed. Any phone call with BAC involved at least a 45 minute wait time on hold where I heard repeated messages "We're here to help! Want to avoid foreclosure? Bank of America has many programs for homeowners! Please stay on the line and our next available representative will be happy to assist you!"
In October, when the weather turned cold, I called a friend who is a home inspector and asked him to go to the house and turn off all the water. I also called the Sierraville PUD to make sure the water was turned off at its main source. The house was left in beautiful condition when I said goodbye to it in September. In the months leading up to my departure, I put money I really didn't have into a new fence, repairs and weekly yard work so the house would have every possible chance of selling.
"Goodbye my beautiful home," I told her kissing the front door. "If I can't have you, maybe a nice family will love you the way I did."
In February, when the house still had not sold despite a sell price of $150,000 less than the purchase price, I drove up from San Diego and out to the house with my real estate agent to speak to a prospective buyer about a short sale. We could not budge the front door despite the key turning easily in the lock. When I went around to look in the window, I noted what appeared to be a sheet of ice on the living room floor and furry stuff growing between the laminate floor boards. I forced a window open and crawled inside. I heard the sound of water gushing from the downstairs bathroom like a creek. I rushed to the hemorrhaging pipe and turned it off and knelt upon the water soaked floor surveying the damage like a person at the scene of a horrible automobile accident. I stopped the bleeding but it was too late. This beautiful woman of a house was near death and I could do nothing now except try to stop further injury to her battered body.
I swallowed back vomit as I phoned State Farm Insurance who told me my policy had "accidentally" been cancelled in September when I called to request a renter's policy for my place in San Diego where I was working. It was the agent's error, but since I accepted the refund money, thinking it was a refund from a different policy, they refused to accept any responsibility. It was a quick, unapologetic phone call from a State Farm adjuster who told me I should have been more responsible. I could not argue; she was right, I should have checked into it further. My only defense was the fog and heaviness that comes along with depression which often manifested in sleepwalking through my days. I was barely over the lip of the worst of it and setbacks sent me tumbling back into immobilizing, withering inertia.
The Bank of America issued its own policy administered by Balboa Insurance Company out of San Diego. I was so dumb with depression that I just assumed that was all part of the Chapter 7 proceedings and didn't bother to check out why Bank of America was issuing a homeowner's policy when I already had one through State Farm (or so I thought). When I made phone calls to the bank or to my bankruptcy attorney, it was all I could do to have a coherent conversation without unraveling into tears.
I drove back up from San Diego in March of 2010 to meet the independent insurance adjuster from Eagle Adjusters in Reno. He seemed incapable of doing his job as the contractor I brought with me noted. We walked through the house which stunk of black mold and was littered with dead flies. I wandered the rooms, once so beautifully decorated and cared for. I wondered if I could just live here anyway. If I died from the black mold, I might not even notice, but at least I could die knowing I had not abandoned a home that felt like my mother.
I waited and waited and waited for Balboa Insurance to issue some sort of disposition as to the adjuster's findings. Serv-Pro out of Reno had already gone in and done some of the tear out and clean up in the house but on April 11th, they informed me that Balboa Insurance was denying any coverage and the work had to stop. Balboa Insurance stated that the policy did not cover black mold nor would it cover any tear-out of asbestos. The house was built in 1853. Its walls and floors contain asbestos and the black mold was a direct result of the burst water pipe. Essentially, they were stating they would do nothing at all.
So the house stood in limbo, unsellable and uninhabitable from February on. I received one written notice in April from Balboa Insurance stating they were awaiting the adjuster's report before issuing a decision on coverage. I made repeated phone calls and left messages for the claims adjuster, all of which were unreturned until I left a message threatening to contact the company's CEO and issue a formal complaint with the insurance commission, which I did.
Meanwhile, the Bank of America, parading its "Home Retention Programs" as an accessible and user-friendly program to assist people like me in retaining their homes, continued to send me reams and reams of paperwork to complete. I happily completed all of it and turned it around with lightning speed, thinking they were really going to offer me a way to at least hang onto the house for long enough to sell it when the market reversed its death drop.
In late May, I received a phone call from another independent adjuster from Eagle Adjusters in Reno who said the previous adjuster dropped the ball and never sent anything into the insurance company at all. So he was hired to re-open the investigation and promised to be thorough and prompt in getting the necessary documentation in to Balboa Insurance Company so that the house could hopefully be brought back to life. In its current condition, it was not even a candidate for a short sale because of the black mold. That was late May. I am writing this on August 13th. On this day, I decided that I would spend a little money I managed to save up on having the grass cut and a lock put on the outside of the sliding glass door.
So I contacted my neighbor, Sara Wright about checking in on the house and recommending a person to do the yard work. She told me she could barely stand to look at the house because it had been so neglected. My shame deepened. I simply had no money to do anything. She recommended I call LaVerne Diltz who at 80 years old, still seems to have it in him to cut grass for folks on his riding mower. Since the grass is knee-high now, it needs a powerful machine to do the work. When I phoned Laverne, he informed me that he'd seen a notice in the legal section of the Mountain Messenger that my house was going to be sold at auction on August 19th.
I heard nothing from the Bank of America about its intention to auction the house; I was under the impression I was working with them to retain it until the insurance company did what they are paid to do which is repair damage to people's homes when unforeseen accidents occur. Once fixed, it would be worth more than the land it sits on and some nice family would come along and buy it at a really decent price. That idea made my heart feel less beaten and broken.
Upon hearing this news from LaVerne, I called the foreclosure department to inquire as to the validity of this news which they affirmed. They were indeed planning to auction the house on August 19th. When I asked whether they planned to inform me, they told me they were under no legal obligation to inform me of their intention to auction the house since it was in foreclosure status.
"But what's the point of going through all the trouble of doing a loan modification if your intent is to auction it anyway?"
The woman answered, "Are you living in the home?"
Exasperated, I told her I was not because the home was uninhabitable. I then launched into the story of what happened for what must have been the 50th time. I also told her I wondered why an insurance company the Bank of America was paying was doing absolutely nothing to make the needed repairs to the house. She was impotent in being able to address this issue nor was she interested in taking any action as every one of the dozens of Bank of America representatives I had spoken to over the previous months had been. She simply said, "Well, we are under no legal obligation to inform you of our intent to auction the property. Loan modification reviews do not prevent foreclosure."
Perhaps they have no legal obligation to inform homeowners that their homes are going on the auction block, but I wonder if corporations like Bank of America or Balboa Insurance or State Farm Insurance feel any ethical or human obligation to keep homeowners informed and apprised of their options and rights. And a little compassion wouldn't hurt either.
As I heard this news, I was driving out to Fallon to the reservation where there is no love put into any of the homes and no life in the land around them. I thought of how crushed I felt when I left my job at Sierra County and how utterly crushed a defeated I felt now as I drove to try to offer a family my services as a therapist. As I pulled onto the dusty road of the family’s home where I was expected to offer family therapy for a full two hours, I swallowed back tears. My pen exploded, leaving blotches of black ink on my hands and clothing and I was out of tissue. Somehow being in this place at this moment in my life seemed almost poetic; the Native American people whom I was about to serve have suffered hundreds of years of abuse and indifference. As a white woman, I have not even begun to touch that experience.
The callousness way in which corporations treat human beings who are losing their homes is literally heart stopping. I can only refuse to take on the same poisonous attitudes of corporations and employers whose stated missions to serve others do not even come close to their actual behavior which is self-serving, profit-centered and amoral.
My house will be auctioned off and my endless chest compressions and resuscitative efforts to revive her will cease. I have accepted full responsibility for overestimating my ability to pay for this house and although my heart weeps for so much at this time, I know that I put all the love and tenderness into a home that cradled many dreams. My reasons for writing this are almost entirely selfish. I lament not having the tenacity to stand my ground when Sierra County Health and Human Services should have taken responsibility to correct a blatant breach of ethics and justice. With a little advocacy and remediation, I may have been able to remain at my job and continue paying for my house, at least until the market rebounded a little. I am angry that this matter was not handled by the director in a manner fitting her position which would have been to remove her assistant director from her position and put her in some other position where she could not cause such harm. I am angry that when I presented this issue to a member of the county Board of Supervisors, nothing was done to see that my position was protected. It seems this is not an uncommon practice among employers in small counties and rural areas. The single most important redemptive experience in my employment in San Diego (which was also with the county) was that behavior such as I experienced in Sierra County would not be tolerated for a second.
The unselfish reason for writing this is to share my experience so that others in similar circumstances know they are not alone and we need to take a stand. I am disheartened and angry that these alleged "Home Retention Programs" appear to be nothing of the sort as many people have told me. In closing, I see more clearly that the problem with this country can be distilled down to a lack of love and lack of attention to each other and to ourselves. Our country suffers from the disease of indifference and an attitude that people are disposable. Reversing the momentum of this monstrous behavior requires unity and courage to speak out and to refuse to be cut-off, put on hold, bounced around and told we have no rights. This applies to the attitudes encountered in the public school systems, government and in our interactions with multi-national corporations whose syrupy sweet mottos belie their “we don’t care, we don’t have to,” behaviors.
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