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At an ill-attended (and somewhat disorganized) press conference at her Market Street campaign office yesterday afternoon, Cheri Honkala once again outlined the platform of her bid to become Philadelphia's next sheriff: "If I'm elected, I'm going to refuse to throw families out of their homes."
Like that message or not, what followed, an illustration of the many ways Philly families are losing their homes, shows there's plenty of reason to worry. Honkala called on her sister Ann Patterson, who spoke about losing her house a year and a half ago, after having lived there for 15 years. "We got talked into an [adjustable-rate mortage] and a balloon payment]" that became unaffordable when Patterson's husband lost his job. She says when all measures had been exhausted, she and her five kids had no choice but leave the house, but the bank refused to take it back, instead continuing to pile on bills.
Glenn Davis, a father of three, says his house has been in foreclosure for over a year. The problem was that his mortgage was sold, and then increased from under $500 to $1,400 a month. "Every time you get into these programs, you think you're safe and you think you can work it out, and then they put you back into foreclosure."
Then, there's Althea Ricks, who fixed up an abandoned house with, she thought, blessing from the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA). "I lived in the house for 10 years, and now the Philadelphia Housing Development Corp. wants to put me out of the house," she says. She says they want $80,000 for the house in northwest Philadelphia.
Also on the agenda: worries over the upcoming PHA auction, which will sell off 400-plus properties on Nov. 16. The concern is that many properties are bundled into groups of 20 or more. Those bundles would be too large not only for the average person to afford, but too large for many developers too, according to real estate agent Judith Robinson.
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