PETITION TO PROTECT TENANTS AND RENTAL UNITS AT FORECLOSURE:

PETITION TO PROTECT TENANTS FROM EVICTION AND STOP SALE OF RENTAL UNITS BY BANKS THAT HAVE TAKEN OWNERSHIP DUE TO A FORECLOSURE ON LANDLORDS.

Presumably, tenants renting homes across the country before and during the housing boom, continued to rent either because their financial stability rested on favorable rents in rent-controlled cities and/or they saw the folly in entering into fantasy loan contracts simply to have a mortgage instead of a rental agreement.
Now, throughout the Country in major cities and small towns, many of these same tenants who could otherwise count themselves lucky and wise that they didn’t venture into homeownership during the housing bubble are now faced with losing their homes due to a foreclosure action against their landlords.
Despite local ordinances in some cities requiring banks to honor lease agreements after taking ownership during a foreclosure, banks are side-stepping the laws, hiring collection attorneys to harass tenants and the inevitable still exists because bank’s have decided that they do not want to be landlords. Therefore, tenants are faced with the harsh reality and a disproportionate outcome that in a very short period of time, they will either have to buy their units or be evicted due to a sale to the highest bidder.
These displaced tenants, many of whom had lived in their units for decades, now have to face a tight rental market, where age and income discrimination is rampant and with escalating rents and slim chances of replacing their unit with an equal one for the same price. Further, sales of tenant -occupied units reduce the overall quantity of rental units available during a time when renting a home is all that a growing number of people can afford to do in this economic downturn even with low interest rates.
It is imperative that the rental stock of homes in this country is protected from the fall-out of the real estate collapse and that banks taking ownership of tenant- occupied units are required by law to honor rental agreements in place at the time of foreclosure for the duration and that at no time is a bank allowed to evict a tenant or put the unit on the market for sale unless the tenant agrees to purchase the unit from the bank at a properly and legally negotiated price without discriminatory financing requirements that may make it difficult to purchase. All options should be available to the tenant including rent-to-own contracts, cash purchases, lease-purchase agreements, or continuation of the rental agreement with the bank acting as the landlord.
Without such protections for the rental stock of homes in this country and without these protections for tenants, a growing number of people will become homeless and our economy is further at risk.