Wells Fargo Bank and US Bank have chosen to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness Month by trying to evict breast cancer survivors from their homes.
Last week, Ana Casas Wilson — a wheelchair-bound woman with cerebral palsy and terminal stage-four breast cancer, and who has struggled for months to get Wells Fargo and US Bank to accept her money and stop foreclosing on her home of forty years — received a final 5-day notice to vacate from LA County Sheriff Lee Baca’s office. Wilson and her family briefly fell behind on her payments after she had to go into the hospital for a double mastectomy, as I described in an earlier post. She and her friends and supporters have launched a round-the-clock vigil at her home in a blue-collar suburb outside Los Angeles (8968 San Juan Ave., South Gate, CA 90280) to resist eviction, as the Los Angeles Times reported last week.
It turns out that Wilson isn’t the only cancer victim that Wells Fargo and US Bank are trying to evict. Community groups around the country have met with others in a similar situation. One of them is retired police detective Jacqueline Barber. She spent 20 years on the Atlanta police force, only retiring after she was injured by a car in the line of duty. In 2009, the predatory loan on her house caused her monthly payment to go up by $1500, and she fought to stay current, according to a local Atlanta news outlet. Then she was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer and had to undergo aggressive treatment to save her life. She fought back against the disease, and spent months filling out forms and asking Wells Fargo for modifications to her mortgage.
A Wells Fargo Executive Vice President assured he they were working on her case. Instead, they sold her loan to US Bank at foreclosure auction, and now she’s fighting imminent eviction. The banks are refusing even to sell the home to friends and family who have banded together to help Jacqueline.
We all know that increased stress makes it harder for the body to fight back against serious illness. There is little in life that is more stressful than being evicted. By pursuing these foreclosure evictions US Bank and Wells Fargo are hurting the lives of Ana and Jacqueline.