Statement from Color of Change:
“Bankers Surety, the largest bail insurance company in the country, has particularly come under fire for their role in exploiting, harassing, and overcharging clients--mostly Black families who are already under economic distress. Most people only know Bankers Insurance for providing flood and disaster insurance, but its most profitable line of business has been Bankers Surety which backs over $2 billion in bail for agents in 49 states. A Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit against Bankers Surety includes claims under RICO for collecting unlawful debt, seizing people against their will, threatening to put them in jail in order to force payment from their families, and requiring people to pay for ankle monitors that cost $10 per day. According to the suit, a man named Ronald Egana was falsely imprisoned and held for ransom repeatedly; bonds agents even made him miss his court date--which bail is supposed to prevent in the first place. This is twisted and practices like this must stop.”
Notably Enough…
This is one of quite a few ways that the poorest families in this nation have been exploited by banks and insurance companies over a long period of time — decades to be exact.
Let’s START with the “Buy Here Pay Here” car dealerships, “Rent To Own” centers, “For Profit” colleges, “Payday Loans,” “Title Pawns,” and “Predatory Home Loans,” to say the least.
There have been many feeder ‘bleed them dry’ veins into majorly Black communities filled with people who are working very hard to do nothing other than have their own piece of the American Dream and a better future for their children.
Work hard can never be an answer in a world where the harder you work, the poorer you become.
How the Dream Became an american Nightmare
The Buy Here Pay Here car dealerships had already factored in losses, knowing that a repo is more valuable than a sold car because it can be sold again and again for consistent lump sums of income with such high turnkey sales. They already knew they would be taking it back within two years or less.
A lawyer I used to work for in Atlanta put it this way “Obama can spread the wealth all he wants. We’ll have it all back in two years anyway.” He thought it was funny.
All I can remember thinking is that the way the system was set up is to cause a certain sector of people to fail no matter what they reach for, no matter what their goals are and opportunities are not. It wasn’t funny, but it was a FACT.
The Rent To Own centers also found a feeder bleeder vein into poorer Black communities, renting stuff to them that they not only wanted but also needed in this high tech age. In exchange for whatever could be squeezed from them, the RTOs are engineered to make certain that thousands are made off items that aren’t worth the down payment. By the time they retire these machines and/or furnishings, they have made THOUSANDS off a $300—$500 heap.
Title Pawn and Payday Loan companies are the same as the Rent To Owners, except even more expensive over the long term. Their customers can never “own” anything, all they can do is rent it to the day they die or turn it in after spending hundreds or thousands on it, in smaller increments of course.
Believe it or not, there are even certain depraved LOW-INCOME HOUSING COMMUNITIES that are put in place to make certain that whatever income these people and families have is never used to benefit them. They exist for one reason and that is to make the owners and investors rich by stiffing them on rent rolls and taking over utility connections in such a way that if anyone moves out and leaves their energy bills unpaid, the other residents have to make the difference. They get it back by putting these people on blast for being “bad renters,” but the residents left behind STILL have to pay. The people still staying there very often get hit with utility bills for other people when they can barely afford their own and even if they find out, they can’t say a word. The extraneous charges are wrapped up in higher rents on renewal even with no change in income, or by up-charging the utility bills they’ve already received from the utility company and threatening residents with eviction if they don’t pay up. It’s a form of legalized extortion, and they get it by telling people to leave if they don’t like it. If they leave, the bills get passed on to other residents. Others usually don’t have any place else to go, so they pay up. They will even advise them to go get a “food box” from the local churches if the additional fees eat into their grocery bills, or go apply for food stamps from a government that says they aren’t “entitled” to them. AND THESE ARE WORKING PEOPLE, folks, usually those who do not even have INSURANCE COVERAGE … not non-working able-bodied welfare dependents.
The For-Profit Schools Betsy DeVos is so proud of did the same.
The government put out money for poorer minorities to go to school and get an education and change their lives and their futures and their future generations and to uplift America with more educated and economically astute citizens. To give them a chance at opportunities that would never be open to them otherwise, but instead of an education and the new life they were promised — they found themselves with a bill of goods of miles of residual debt and a college degree or certification from an unaccredited school that wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on … if they even got that.
It’s easy to see how people who weren’t ever going to get an opportunity in the first place can give up and say the hell with it all and commit themselves to vice and crime
Last but certainly not least, a MAJOR financial collapse in America happened simply because some of the people who would never have lived to experience owning a home without help wanted a home of their own.
Like any other human being in the world, they wanted a yard for their own children to play in, a safe space, a neighborhood that was clean and quiet, and a chance at owning equity in the most America has ever offered anyone—land and a home of their own.
Some unscrupulous bankers and insurers and investors made it their intent to only RENT houses to people who thought they were purchasing a home or borrowing for home improvements.
The intent was, from the start, to take the FHA insurance money put out to help lower income people buy affordable housing and to eventually foreclose on the home so they could resell it to the next person that they could deceive and exploit using the same mechanisms and two to three years later, do it all over again.
For them, it’s better to keep re-selling a home over a short period of time than to make it affordable enough for people to stay in them and pay them off.
In REO, there aren’t too many workers in the industry who won’t tell you that they already knew that they would foreclose in less than five years — more than likely two or three; because it was set up to operate that way on purpose and #bydesign.
They make boatloads of money on foreclosures, not on home sales; so that’s the point-and they nearly killed the US economy because of it.
They’re still doing it now.
The End.
-30-
Note: BETSY DEVOS, boo’ed by the people she tries to sell her profiteering educational ventures to, SAID “They don’t have the capacity to understand.” Oh they understand alright Betsy.
Your message -and theirs- has come through loud and clear. They get and fully understand being lied to, cheated, exploited, robbed, and then scandalized for ALLOWING YOU TO DO IT after it’s too late.
That’s why they want you OUT. Nobody’s falling for it any more.