David Co — the human being responsible for a German bank’s millions of properties across the U.S. — flew to New Haven from California to hear a pitch not to evict families from foreclosed houses.
Co, 41, is the “manager of MBS Trust & Custody Administration” for Deutsche Bank. That means he’s ultimately responsible for what happens to countless foreclosed-upon homes that Deutsche is holding after its investments in shaky mortgage-backed securities tanked — helping to spark the nationwide housing crisis and Wall Street meltdown. He works out of Santa Ana., Calif.
He flew Monday night to Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks from Santa Ana, then took a room at New Haven’s Omni hotel. Tuesday morning, he joined 30 other industry people from around the country for an unusual session in a second-floor conference room in City Hall.
“I came out in support of this effort,” Co said after the two-hour session, which included a corporate-responsibility pitch from Mayor John DeStefano Jr.. “They really want to know who to talk to.”
The session was part of an aggressive effort by a public-private rescue squad called ROOF (Real Options, Overcoming Foreclosures) to respond to New Haven’s foreclosure crisis. The effort includes putting a face on, and securing a local contact telephone number for, distant lenders like Deutsche Bank that now control abandoned property in the city’s neighborhoods.
In fact, Deutsche is the big kahuna of problem out-of-town absentee landlords. Deutsche filed the most foreclosure suits, 130 out of 945, in the city in 2008, according to ROOF Director Eva Heintzelman.
So the people invited to Tuesday’s meeting included not just Co, but Deutsche’s New Haven “servicers” — representatives of companies from several states who carry out the day-to-day duties of selling Deutsche’s foreclosed-upon properties (or not), keeping them up (or not), and evicting tenants.
Under a law that went into effect last week, lenders who have foreclosed on New Haven homes have to register a contact person with the city or face $250-a-day fines and eventual foreclosure by the city. The idea behind the law is to force distant lenders overwhelmed by problem properties across the country to pay attention to blight here in New Haven.
Tuesday’s City Hall session addressed a second issue: the fate of hundreds of families living in the houses being foreclosed on. Deutsche’s servicers are said to routinely boot tenants when they seize a property, as a matter of course.
Legal-aid lawyers and ROOF organizers urged them Tuesday to reconsider that practice.
They brought in persuasive witnesses to echo the call — three officials from FannieMae. Under pressure from New Haven legal aid lawyers, FannieMae late last year changed its policy of evicting families from foreclosed-upon properties.
John F. Bauer (pictured), director of finance for Fannie’s Single-Family Division in Washington, spoke to the group Tuesday about how well the new policy has worked, preserving the condition of homes and therefore the lender’s investments.
“It’s better for the neighborhood, better for the property, better for the families,” Bauer said afterward.
The servicers left the meeting promising to consult their bosses about whether to heed the call to halt evictions, then report back to legal aid’s Amy Marx. The companies tend to have national policies.
“Big banks and servicers have massive systems,” noted ROOF’s Henitzelman. “Changing their systems is a challenge” that requires working with a bureaucracy.
Deutsche’s Co said the decision of whether to implement a FannieMae-like non-eviction policy is up to the servicers, not to Deutsche. He does support the concept, he said.
“We are certainly for keeping people in their homes,” he said, if such a policy “preserves the trust assets” and “helps minimize the losses.”
Co was asked how many houses across the country he’s responsible for.
He paused. First he gave the number as 2,000. But that referred to securitization packages for which Deutsche serves as the trustee. Each of those deals involved hundreds or thousands of individual properties, he said.
The number of houses overall? “Millions” was his best guess.
Previous Independent coverage of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis:
• Banks Duck City On Foreclosed Homes
• Rescue Squad Hunts For “Tipping Points”
• Flippers Get 2nd Shot At Fixer-Upper
• Suburban Cop Finds A City Steal
• Absentee Banklords Thwart Foreclosure Sales
• Donovan: “Help Is On The Way”
• Judge Forces WPCA To Give Mom A Chance
• WPCA Uproots Tenants, Too
• Home-Rescue Squad Ignores WPCA
• Sewer Agency Unloads House
• Foreclosure Evictions Halted
• Let The Bank Have It, This Time
• Hazel St. Sale Reflects Economic Climate
• Hill Foreclosure Triggers Memories, & Prayers
• Foreclosure Fee-Slashing Judge Leaves Town
• She’ll Be Watching Deutsche Bank
• A Last Pre-Foreclosure Look At A Lifetime Past
• New Yorker Snags Foreclosed-Upon Gem
• Foreclosure Dream Goes Sour
• Judge Slashes Foreclosure Bounty
• Tax Break Saves Woman’s House
• Bank Replaces “Gunshot Alley” Landlord
• Foreclosure Bill OK’d
• Singh Seeks Home For A Song
• Foreclosure’s Neighbor Worries More About Speeding
• Networking Replaces Foreclosure at Christy’s
• Foreclosure Bargain — & Renewal — Jeopardized
• Bank Outbids Akbar; Family May Keep Home
• “So Don’t Worry About Pablo”
• Bankruptcy Postpones Foreclosure
• Next-Door Foreclosures, 53 Years Apart
• They Met On Foreclosure Way
• Little Garage Draws Big Bids
• A 2nd Chance on Lewis Street
• Foreclosure Attracts New Breed of “Specialist”
• In Foreclosures, Judge’s Hands Tied
• Home Saved From Foreclosure. Cycle, Too
• A House For Precious?
• Deutsche Bank Grabs Dixwell Condo
• Reluctant Bidder Snags F. Haven Bargain
• Well, There’s Always Powerball
• Neighbors Retrieve Home From Bank
• Somebody Has Plans For Bassett Street
• Foreclosed, the Khennavongs Leave the Santanas
• Foreclosure Steal May Be Too Good
• 2nd Foreclosure in 3 Months Dims Bright St.
• After Foreclosure, W’ville Owner Still Hopes To Sell
• He’s Not Buying, Yet
• Quiet Foreclosure on Porter Street
• 3 Minutes Too Late
• Historic Gambardella Property Foreclosed
•2 Homes Lost, 1 Gained
• “Everybody’s Got To Eat”
• More Foreclosures, More Signs
• Foreclosure Sale Benefits Archie Moore’s
• Rescue Squad Swings Into Action
• A Bidder Shows Up
• Bank Beats Tanya’s Bid
• Westville Auction Draws A Crowd
• DeStefano: Foreclosure Plan Ready
• Can They Help?
• “We Should Over-Regulate These Bastards”
• Rosa Hears of Rescues
• WPCA Grilled on Foreclosures
• WPCA’s Targets Struggle To Dig Out
• Sue The Subprimers?
• WPCA Hearing Delayed
• Megna’s “Blood Boils” at WPCA Tactics
• Goldfield Wants WPCA Answers
• 2 Days, 8 Foreclosure Suits
• WPCA Goes On Foreclosure Binge
• A Guru Weighs In
• WPCA Targets Church
• Subprime Mess Targeted
• Renters Caught In Foreclosure King’s Fall
• She’s One Of 1,150 In The Foreclosure Mill
• Foreclosures Threaten Perrotti’s Empire
•“I’m Not Going To Lay Down And Let Them Take My House”
• Struggling Couple Sues Over “Scam”
To learn about the ROOF Project, a community-wide effort to help New Haveners navigate the foreclosure crisis, click here.
The following links are to various materials and brochures designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
How to prepare a complaint to the Department of Banking; Department of Banking Online Assistance Form; Connecticut Department of Banking, Avoiding Foreclosure; FDIC Consumer News; Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut, Inc; Connecticut Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service.
For lawyer referral services in New Haven, call 562-5750 or visit this website. For the Department of Social Services (DSS) Eviction Foreclosure Prevention Program (EFPP), call 211 to see which community-based organization in the state serves your town.
Click here for information on foreclosure prevention efforts from Empower New Haven.
Wait a minute!
He "flew to New Haven from California," in one sentence, then, a short while later, we read he "flew to Bradley International Airport from Santa Ana." Well, which one is it? Sounds pretty inconsistent to me.
[Paul Bass responds: How true! He did take a plane to Bradley, not Tweed; then took surface transportation to New Haven. Thanks for pointing that out.]