SAFE Network: actions for housing justice

BySAFE

SAFE

Upcoming Action: 

What: Foreclosure Auction Disruption.

When: 9:00 AM – noon, Friday, Sept. 28.
Where: Meet at SAFE’s office at Bethany (corner Beacon Ave. S and Graham St.).
How: Noise-makers, signs.
Why: To demand a moratorium on all bank evictions.
Target: Routh Crabtree Olsen, aka, Northwest Trustee Services in Bellevue.  (SAFE will provide transportation.)

The banks — with their history of fraud, corruption, money laundering, and rate fixing — use companies called trustees to carry out foreclosures and evictions.  Trustees, not unlike Mafia goons, do the banks’ dirty work, making their money off the backs of poor and distressed families.  In the past year, the trustee with more Seattle foreclosures than all other trustees combined is Northwest Trustee Services (NTS).  “Associated” with NTS is Routh Crabtree Olsen (RCO), a law firm representing the big banks.  Both NTS and RCO have their offices in the same building in Bellevue.  Every Friday morning NTS conducts a foreclosure auction, at which families lose their homes.  Our intention is to disrupt this auction and expose NTS and RCO as Seattle’s leading foreclosure profiteer.

NTS conducts their auctions in the garage under its building in Bellevue, in violation of WA State law requiring all foreclosure auctions be held in a “designated public place.”  Although there have been auction disruptions in the past, specifically at the County Court-house in Seattle, it is our understanding that no one has ever attempted to disrupt an NTS auction.  This will be a first.
Other Upcoming Events:
4:30 – 5:30 PM, Tuesdays:   Please join us for a Banner Drop on the skybridge at the intersection of Rainier Ave. and MLK Blvd.
7:00 – 8:30 PM, Tuesdays:   Organizational Meeting at Bethany UCC.  All are welcome.
5:00 – 7:00 PM, Wednesdays: Canvassing homeowners in foreclosure.  All are welcome.  No experience necessary.

This Past Week:
We continued to canvass, finding more and more homeowners being hammered by a political/economic system that has no use for the poor.  One family we met with three children lives without electricity and heat.  At night their house is completely dark and cold.

We are also developing a closer relationship with HomeSight, a local agency that gives free counseling assistance to those being harassed by the banks.  They have been extremely supportive, and everyone at SAFE appreciates their help.

Again, if you haven’t heard our press coverage, please check out these links:



Questions?  Comments?
You can reach us at info@SAFEinSeattle.org or 206-203-2125.  Please visit our web site:  www.SAFEinSeattle.org.

Thoughts:

Tim Pawlenty, former governor of MN and 2012 presidential candidate, who ran on an anti-Wall Street platform, calling the banks “some of the worst offenders when it comes to bailouts and carve-outs and special deals” and telling bankers to “get their snout out of the trough,” this same Tim Pawlenty is now the president of the Financial Services Roundtable, one of Wall Street’s most important lobbying groups.  His tune has now shifted 180 degrees.  Why?  Well, the last president of the Financial Services Roundtable made an annual salary of $1.8 million.  Nothing sharpens one’s political views like a couple of million dollars.

Housing is a Human Right!

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