Bank Tenant Association

            Working with Legal Services folks, City Life organized the Bank Tenant Association in the summer of 2007 to organize against foreclosure evictions.  Since then we have stopped 95% of the evictions that have come to us.  We are working with hundreds of households.  Large move-out settlements have been won.  Banks have backed down and accepted rent. 

City Life/Vida Urbana is proof that local residents, when active and organized, can significantly improve their own lives. Created in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston in 1973 by political activists influenced by the civil rights, feminist, and anti-Vietnam War movements, City Life/Vida Urbana’s successful strikes and eviction blockings quickly made the organization visible with tenants, landlords, urban planners, and public officials.

http://citylifevidaurbana.blogspot.com/2009/03/purim-progressives-and-ci...

The Bank Tenant Association is composed of occupants of foreclosed buildings, both former owners and tenants. We stress that, after foreclosure, everyone is a tenant of the bank. It also includes some people not yet foreclosed who feel that foreclosure is imminent.

Working with Legal Services folks, City Life organized the Bank Tenant Association in the summer of 2007 to organize against foreclosure evictions. Since then we have stopped 95% of the evictions that have come to us. We are working with hundreds of households. Large move-out settlements have been won. Banks have backed down and accepted rent.

In increasing numbers of cases, banks are even selling properties to occupants at the real appraised value, perhaps half the old loan value. This “cramdown” of principle is almost unachievable by normal loan modification efforts. It has been made possible by a committed and growing movement of Bank tenants, willing to engage in dramatic protests, including civil disobedience, alongside more standard legal defense.