Under The Sun

by Dan Grech

Marie Nadine Pierre and her daughter, Nennon, sit on a mattress in a foreclosed home that they now occupy. /J Pat Carter (The Associated Press)

In Episode 2, we joined Miami activists Take Back the Land as they moved a homeless woman into a foreclosed home in Little Haiti.

The New York Times just followed with its own story on the front page.

The NYT piece takes a national perspective, mentioning similar efforts to move homeless people into people-less homes in Minnesota, Philadelphia and Louisville, KY.  But what jumped out for me was the story of Mary Trody, whose family of 12 (including Mary’s mother, siblings, and children) was evicted from their modest home in northwest
Miami-Dade.  They spent a weekend in a paneled truck — and then Take Back the Land helped them move right back in.

I ask:  Why evict them in the first place?  Mary Trody says she was willing to fork over a minimal payment to stay in their house, but the bank wasn’t interested.  I’ve spoken to other local brokers, and I’ve
heard this story again and again.  Banks seem to prefer kicking homeowners to the curb, even paying them thousands in “key fees” to get them to leave, even though that leaves the homes vacant and vulnerable to squatters and vandals.  The world seems upside down.

So what sent Mary and her family into financial freefall? Her husband lost his delivery job with The Miami Herald.