No one bid on this woman's home. Yippee!
Every day, a group of entrepreneurs holding tiny laptops show up on the Multnomah County Courthouse steps, eager to pick up homes on the cheap. The foreclosed home auctions are the end of a long, terrible financial episode for many local homeowners.
Today, one day before Christmas Eve, the house of 49-year-old Southeast Portland resident Angela Hill was slated for the auction block. Occupy Portland sent out an email and Facebook alert about the auction last night and just over a dozen activists rallied this morning at the courthouse to try and save Hill's home. They were in luck: No one bid on the property, so Hill gets to stick around for at least a little while longer.
Hill was running an adult caretaking business out of the seven-bedroom home, but the business was rocky and Wells Fargo began threatening her with foreclosure in 2008. "Every time I called in to consult with someone, I was going in circles," says Hill. "They would only give me people who were not decision makers, it was like a circle every time I called them and yet they were continuously harassing me with the language, 'This is an attempt to collect a debt.'"
If you live in the Portland, Oregon area I encourage you to show your Christmas spirit and come to the Multnomah County Building 501 SE Hawthorne Blvd., Suite 175, Portland, OR at 10 am Friday morning.
Angela Hill and her two children deserve the right to keep their home on SE 120th. The day before Christmas, Fannie Mae and Wells Fargo are teaming up with Multnomah County to auction off their home.
Angela asks that you take a moment of your time to come out and show your support in solidarity of all people's right to housing. With enough supportive people, the hope is to pressure the financial institutions and County to allow Angela and family to keep the house, therefore avoiding their homelessness.
Under tremendous hardships, Angela has given so much to Groundwork Portland this past year, the Emerson Street Garden, and youth from da Vinci school. She, and her entire family have been rooted in Portland for generations, giving back to the community in countless ways.
Can you come tomorrow morning?
Personally I like the idea of a penny auction:
Some farmers in Madison County, Nebraska, took matters into their own hands. In 1931, about 150 farmers showed up at a foreclosure auction at the Von Bonn family farm. The bank was selling the land and equipment because the family coundn't repay a loan. The bank expected to make hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
As those who were there remember it, the auctioneer began with a piece of equipment. The first bid was 5-cents. When someone else tried to raise that bid, he was requested not to do so – forcibly. Item after item got only one or two Video Interview Thurman Hoskinsbids. All were ridiculously low. The proceeds for that first "Penny Auction" were $5.35, which the bank was supposed to accept to pay off the loan.
The idea caught on. Harvey Pickrel remembers going to a Penny Auction where "some of the farmers wouldn't bid on anything at all – because they were trying to help the man that was being sold out." At auctions across the Midwest, farmers showed up as a group and physically prevented any real bidders from placing bids. But the banks figured out ways to get around these illegal Penny Auctions.