During the national mortgage settlement in 2012, five lenders accused of illegally foreclosing homes agreed to pay billions of dollars to help homeowners who lost their homes during the financial crisis. T<\/p>\n
he state of Texas received the third largest allotment from the settlement when Bank of America, Citi, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Ally set aside $124 million for Texan homeowners. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately, although \u201cthe money was earmarked,\u201d and \u201cthe settlement designates where the money is supposed to go,\u201d according to Richard Roman, an attorney for a Texas homeowner, \u201c[w]hen it got to Texas, it went somewhere else.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Where did the funds go?<\/h2>\n
\u201cSomewhere else\u201d turned out to be the state\u2019s general fund. Investigative journalists at ABC affiliate station WFAA discovered that none of the homeowners affected by the foreclosure crisis received any pay out from the settlement fund. <\/p>\n
Instead, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott placed the money in the state\u2019s bank account, where it became unavailable for homeowners. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The settlement designated that \u201c[t]o the extent practicable, such funds shall be used for purposes intended to avoid preventable foreclosures, to ameliorate the effects of the foreclosure crisis, to enhance law enforcement efforts to prevent and prosecute financial fraud, or unfair or deceptive acts or practices\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n
Law makers tackle the issue<\/h2>\n
Despite these fairly clear specifications, Jim Daross, a lawyer at Abbott\u2019s office claims that it was \u201c\u2019impracticable\u2019\u201d to \u201cdo anything other than pay the funds over to the general fund.\u201d <\/p>\n
State representative Yvonne Davis, a Democrat, tackled the issue from a legislative angle, introducing a bill that would make funds available for homeowners. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
She remarked, \u201cit made no sense\u2026 for the state to take all the money and not provide programs, resources, things to make a difference in people\u2019s lives\u2026 That money was supposed to help them where they\u2019ve been wronged.\u201d The bill passed in May.<\/p>\n
A lawsuit against the state of Texas is pending. <\/p>\n
#MortgageSettlement<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In one state, funds went to the government and are said to have never made it into the hands of the victims of illegal foreclosures. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337314,"featured_media":5930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[365],"tags":[319],"class_list":["post-5929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-mortgage-settlement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/11\/cash-money.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5931,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5929\/revisions\/5931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}