Parishioners Unite To Fight Foreclosure
The foreclosure wave is far from over. One homeowner in five now owes more than their home is worth. All told, more than $2 trillion in home equity was lost last year. High foreclosure rates are projected for eight states and Washington D.C. next year. But in at least one community, as CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports, homeowners are finding strength in numbers.
Parishioners at Mary Immaculate Church in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley know they can turn to Father John Lasseigne on matters of faith and matters of finance.
"A family approached me after mass, I never in my 9 years as a priest had a family say, 'Father, we're about to lose their home, please pray for us.' So that's exactly what I did," Lasseigne says.
He also asked around and found that hundreds in his congregation, and 8,000 in his working class parish, were in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure.
"When you have thousands of families at risk of being put out of their homes, then that certainly is a crisis," Lasseigne says.
So after many prayers, he hatched a plan. If thousands of individuals were sinking, Lasseigne thought, maybe together they could stay afloat. Joining other Catholic churches and community groups like One L.A. and Neighborhood Legal Services, he helped mobilize and organize more than 500 families, mostly immigrants, to negotiate with lenders en masse.
It was help the Sanchez family had prayed for. A tiny house they bought for $465,000 at the height of the housing bubble, now is worth half that, while their monthly payments have ballooned.
"Now it's almost $5,000," says Marta Sanchez. "We can't do it even if we work 24 hours."
They owe so much, Whitaker reports, the Obama bailout probably won't help them.
When they asked the bank to renegotiate, they say the bank wouldn't listen. So Sanchez joined her neighbors at Mary Immaculate to press lenders to modify their loans. So far, the banks aren't forgiving loans, but they are finally listening.
"It's still something of a David versus Goliath struggle," Lasseigne says. "But united together, pooling our resources, we can have an effect."
Some find the people power tactics troubling.
"Do we live in an environment where when people make bad financial decisions, the government should go in and bail people out?" asks Christopher Thornberg, with Beacon Economics. "I don't think so."
But for Father Lasseigne, it's a matter of faith, Whitaker reports, that there's power in prayer and strength in numbers.
"This is not about saving homes, it's about saving families," Lasseigne says.
By Bill Whitaker
