Workers, Families, Allies Lobby 

Lawmakers For Mortgage Aid

By Mark Gruenberg

PAI Staff Writer

APPLE VALLEY, Minn. (PAI)--Graying, distinguished, voluble music teacher Al 

Ynigues hasn’t lost his house in Apple Valley, Minn.--yet. But he’s on the verge 

of doing so, as are millions of other people, unless Congress steps in to help.

And that need led Ynigues and several hundred other homeowners, from as near as 

D.C. and Philadelphia and as far as Oakland and Seattle, to come to Washington 

to lobby lawmakers on March 11-12 for mortgage relief.

Marshaled by the grass-roots activist group ACORN (Association of Community 

Organizations for Reform Now) and with the backing of the AFL-CIO, the 

homeowners demanded lawmakers pass bills to prevent home foreclosures and to 

help them redo the mortgages. The foreclosures have been forced on homeowners by 

financial institutions hurt--directly or indirectly--by the sub-prime mortgage 

lending crisis.

But for Ynigues and the others, much of the problem comes from the lenders own misrepresentations if not outright fraud. He took his story to Rep. Keith 

Ellison (D-Minn.) and other members of his state’s delegation--Democratic and 

Republican--just as he had taken it to the steps of the state capitol in St. 

Paul the month before.

It is a story that, with variations, could be repeated by millions of people 

nationwide now caught in the foreclosure crunch.

Ynigues explained he had given music lessons to a local real estate broker and 

the broker’s kids, so when he considered buying a home in Dakota County, Minn., 

he approached the broker, expecting an honest deal. What he got was anything 

but.

The first thing Ynigues got was false information. The broker steered him away 

from a first-time homebuyer’s program the county offered, with a favorable 

interest rate

--1 percentage point above the prime rate--that he could have afforded, and that 

Ynigues later found out, from ACORN, that he qualified for.

“But the broker was very aggressive and gave me a mortgage with a ‘teaser’ rate 

of 6.9%,” he told Press Associates Union News Service, in a story that could be 

repeated hundreds of times nationwide. But after 24 months, that “teaser rate” 

jumped by three percentage points, to 9.9%, and his monthly payment rose to 

$900. 

It’s scheduled to jump again next month, to 13.9%, and $2,400. Ynigues has to 

pay the first mortgage, plus $440 on a second mortgage, taken out to help pay 

the first.

How can he afford that, on a monthly income from music teaching and consulting 

of $3,000? He can’t. When the broker put in Ynigues’ application for the loan, 

the broker arbitrarily changed the music teacher’s income to $10,000 monthly. 

“And he got a $5,000 ‘annual yield premium’ to talk me out the Dakota County 

first mortgage program, too,” Ynigues says. 

Ynigues is still mad that the broker isn’t on trial for fraud; a lawsuit on 

Ynigues’ behalf by ACORN is pending. And after seven months on the original 

rate, when Ynigues asked the broker if he could refinance to get a lower rate, 

he was told it would cost “$7,000 in closing costs, appraisal fees and inspection fees.” He didn’t 

refinance.

Upset and scared at the prospect of losing his house, Ynigues took his problems 

late last year to ACORN. The housing counselor at its Twin Cities office read 

through his papers and gasped: “Oh my God, you got screwed” and set to work on 

his case.

He also took his cause to the state legislature.

But Ynigues is not alone and that was the point of the D.C. rally as other 

homeowners, some of them with babies in arms, told of how other unscrupulous 

lenders in the sub-prime mortgage market left them over a barrel, facing 

foreclosure.

They drew support from sympathetic Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Sherrod 

Brown (D-Ohio). Cleveland tops the nation in mortgage foreclosures and Detroit 

is not far behind, but the whole country is suffering. “This fight is about 

every person who is in the middle class. It’s about justice,” Stabenow said. 

“We’re trying to put in $200 million in the budget to go to non-profit 

organizations for counseling for these people” to help them keep their home “and authorize $4 

billion for Community Development Block Grants so cities and towns can step in 

to help them keep their homes, but Bush says ‘no.’ Why? Because he wants to 

spend $3 billion a week on his war in Iraq,” Brown said.

The fight over the budget and the presidential election “are all about” clashing 

priorities, Brown added. “Do you want to spend $3 billion a week in Iraq or $3 

billion”--but not in a week--“for housing working families in Cleveland, Akron 

and Toledo?”

Homeowners facing foreclosure also have AFL-CIO support. The federation’s 

Executive Council, meeting in San Diego March 4, demanded “an aggressive 

strategy” from lawmakers to help them, starting with a 6-to-12 month moratorium 

on foreclosures. The time would be used to create traditional 30-year mortgages, 

at lower rates,

“Many middle-class workers and individuals employed in low-paying jobs are one