System Overrun With People Peddling False Promises & Dispensing Horrible Advice Claims Another Victim

In Arverne, Queens, New York Magazine recounts the saga Jacqueline Tamaklo, a local resident who was born in Liberia and immigrated from Ghana, and the two-family house she bought in 2006 and is fighting to keep from losing to foreclosure. Her saga starts when she misplaced her trust in her preacher, a bishop and leader of a local church who also happened to moonlight in the real estate business, who, in her view, set her up for the major screwing over she is currently going through. On how she got herself into the mess she finds herself in:

• Looking back, she believes it wasn’t only naïveté and ignorance that led her here; it was an excess of trust she placed in a system that had long since lost all safeguards, that was overrun with people peddling false promises and dispensing horrible advice. It’s a situation lots of homeowners find themselves in, though in Jackie’s case, the betrayal of trust felt especially steep.

For her story, see Last Home Standing (Jacqueline Tamaklo lives in one of New York’s most foreclosure-ridden neighborhoods. And now she’s fighting not to end up like the Joneses) (go here for entire story on one page).