Nix "Cash For Keys" Deals & Fight Lenders In Court Instead, Say Boston Law Students To Area Tenants Facing Foreclosure Eviction

In Boston, Massachusetts, The Harvard Crimson reports on a group of Harvard law students who are encouraging tenants in foreclosed homes to refuse "cash for keys" offers from lenders and fight foreclosure evictions in court instead.

• [W]orking at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, [third-year law students Nicholas J.] Hartigan and [David E.] Haller have long represented tenants against banks, but when they realized less than half of foreclosure [eviction] cases reached the courts, they knew they needed to go out and find the missing tenants.

• Along with Anthony B. Borich, a third-year Law School student, they started No One Leaves, an organization of individuals who canvass different zones of Boston. Each week this fall, they and an army of volunteers, including some College students, have been visiting foreclosed homes, knocking on doors, and telling residents to stay put. [...] “The idea is to give these people a heads-up before those damn cash-for-keys people get there,” Hartigan says [...].

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• The bank that has seized the property must now go through the full eviction process. According to Hartigan and Haller, every tenant can expect a much larger payment through this process while staying in his or her home without paying rent.

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• As members of the Legal Aid Bureau, Hartigan and Haller act as legal counsel to many tenants of foreclosed properties, sometimes winning settlements that represent a significant percentage of the property’s original price. Haller—who recently represented a tenant who lost heat, water, and access to his home after the bank changed the lock on the door—says that juries tend to be sympathetic to his clients. In this case, he was awarded over $50,000 for emotional distress and for the diminution of value of the property, and Haller says that there is a “good possibility” that sum will be doubled or tripled.

For more, see ‘No One Leaves’ Keeping People Put.

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In a related story, The Boston Globe reports:

• The administration of Governor Deval L. Patrick said [this week] that it has issued a brochure outlining the rights and responsibilities of Massachusetts renters living in foreclosed buildings.

For more, see New foreclosure brochure outlines renters' rights.

For the online version of the brochure, see Tenants Rights: What Tenants In Foreclosed Properties Need To Know.

See also, MassLegalHelp: If Your Building is Being Foreclosed, Don’t Fall for “Cash-for-Keys” Schemes.

Go here for more on the law students at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau urging tenants in foreclosed homes to fight back against careless/reckless mortgage companies seeking illegal evictions. ThetaTenantRentSkimming