The following is a narrative by Bob Butler, a reporter who collaborated with The Lens to produce One homeowner’s travails: Even after more than six years, family can’t move back into “new” house. Butler describes here the process of investigating this story, interviewing Kisa Holmes, and the ethics surrounding housing finance in New Orleans.
In August of 2008 I was working as a reporter on the Chauncey Bailey Project (www.chaunceybaileyproject.org) in Oakland. One of the editors said she’d received a grant to do some sort of an investigative housing story related to Hurricane Katrina and asked if I was interested. We did not know what the story would be or where we would end up.
During a party for Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009 I met a woman from New Orleans who told me banks were forcing people to pay off their mortgages with their insurance proceeds or persuading people to do it voluntarily.
I began calling non-profit legal aid services and community service groups where I learned this happened…a lot. But many people who were victims did not want to talk about it: they just wanted to move on.
One non-profit, the Bunnyfriend Association, put me in touch with Kisa Holmes, who did want to talk about it because she felt her bank and the recovery system took advantage of her.
In March 2009, I made my first trip to New Orleans and met Kisa. I also went to the courthouse where I found there were more than 4,000 Katrina-related civil lawsuits filed against banks and/or insurance companies.
I began to call the attorneys for the plaintiffs to see how many of these were related to forced mortgage payoffs. That’s how I met Stanley Cohn.
In June 2009 I met Sandie McCarthy Brown at the Pro Bono Project who explained how easy it was for banks to convince people to turn over their insurance money.
Holmes is still not home… six and a half years after Katrina. Her plight is the result of the complicated Road Home recovery system, her lack of financial literacy and the many doors at local, regional and national aid groups that have been slammed in her face.
While it may sound like her bank did something wrong, it turns out it was legally within its rights to take the insurance money. But, whether pushing people who did not know any better to retire their loans was morally or ethically correct is another matter.
As a reporter, I have covered numerous disasters — 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco, 1991 Eastbay Hills fire in Oakland, 1997 New Year’s flood in Northern California, the 2007 wildfires in Southern California, etc. — and I can’t find another mass case of people being forced — or pressured — to pay off their mortgages with insurance money.
Bob Butler is a reporter with KCBS Radio in San Francisco, Vice President Broadcast of National Association of Black Journalists and Vice President of AFTRA.
