Cleveland Urban News. Com (Kathy Wray Coleman

is a 20-year investigative journalist who trained

for 17 years at the Call an Post Newspaper

CLEVELAND, Ohio- Community activists and victims and their family members gave testimony yesterday evening for the housing committee of the Cleveland Branch NAACP seeking state and federal legislation on foreclosure and mortgage impropriety and in support of the Restore Our Neighborhoods Act of 2013, a pending bill to tear down abandoned homes across the country that cannot be salvaged that was introduced last year by Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (D-11), Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-9) and Congressman Dave Joyce (R-14).

The next testimony session, organizers said, will be held on Cleveland's west side at the offices of the Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Campaign, which is led by Community Activist Larry Bresler, who also leads the grassroots group Organize Ohio.

Tuesday's gathering comes on the heels in recent years and in the last year more specifically of a mountain of missing women, three of their bodies found last March on Cleveland's east side in close proximity of one another, three murdered last summer in East Cleveland near abandoned homes, and the rescue last May of three young women from torture and rape from the then home of the infamous Ariel Castro on Cleveland's west side.

Community activists believe that Castro got away with holding his victims captive for 10 years in his partly boarded up home partly because of the climate abandoned homes bring to urban and impoverished areas throughout the country, and they testified to it at Tuesday's NAACP  meeting, which was held at Bright Star Missionary Baptist Church in East Cleveland.

Intriguingly, Castro's home was sold to the Cuyahoga County land bank as part of his plea deal and has since been demolished, and he was subsequently found dead in his jail cell after getting a life sentence after pleading guilty last year to a host of crimes, including multiple counts of rape and kidnapping.

East Cleveland is a colorful town, and a neighboring Black and impoverished suburb of Cleveland, a largely Black major American city where foreclosures have been rampant.

Ohio ranks fifth nationwide in foreclosures, data show. That data, among other information, also on violence against women statistics, was presented by activists during their testimonies.

Since 1995 Cuyahoga County has spent in excess of $52 thousand relative to unpaid taxes on abandoned properties, according to a 2013 report by Frank Ford, a foreclosure expert with the Thriving Communities Institute. And between 2009 and 2013 the number of foreclosure filings in the county averaged 8,000 annually, peaking at around 10,000 in 2010.

The activists also called for resources from President Barack Obama and Ohio Governor John Kasich to deal with the crisis of missing women and abandoned and foreclosed homes, and the disproportionate amount of  raped and murdered women of greater Cleveland across racial lines.

Steven Caviness, a housing representative from Congresswoman Fudge's office, also attended the event, which included a videographer to prepare a DVD of the respective testimonies for the NAACP, Fudge, Kaptur and affiliated community activists groups.

The Cleveland NAACP is led by the Rev Hilton Smith, an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland and a community relations vice president for Turner Construction Company. Sheila Wright is the local chapter's executive director.

The Cleveland NAACP housing committee is led by the Rev. David Hunter, senior pastor at Bright Star Missionary Baptist Church and president of the Baptist Ministers Alliance. It drew testimony from Hunter, Black on Black Crime Vice President Al Porter, Imperial Women Coalition Leader Kathy Wray Coleman, Oppressed People's Nation Chairperson Ernest Smith, Imperial Women Activist Group Member Bettie Simpson, and the Rev Pamela Pinkney Butts. Also testifying were David and Marva Patterson of the Carl Stokes Brigade, Dr. Stuart Robinson and Valerie Robinson of Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor and Imperial Women, Mariah Crenshaw of Communities United, and Christine Wilson, who testified that she had allegedly been raped 30 years ago and that her daughter had been abducted and raped in an abandoned home just last year, one of the alleged assailants pleading guilty to abduction and another to go on trial this year.

"We support the Restore Our Neighborhoods Act," Wilson testified.

Hunter said that the housing committee of the Cleveland NAACP will stand tall on foreclosure issues in support of Black people disenfranchised by irregularities pertaining to them and on other issues, including housing discrimination, abandoned homes, and unprecedented violence against Black

women in poor areas of Cleveland and East Cleveland and elsewhere.

Activists want both a state and federal law that precludes sheriffs from hiring appraisers for foreclosures saying that they are frequently violating the law and depreciating the values for sale when Ohio law requires that they are appraised like other residential homes, and that money remaining from a foreclosure sale must be returned to the prior homeowner, also per state law.  Activists said that state law allows a county sheriff to sale foreclosed homes for one-third off the appraised value but it does not allow a third off and then outright theft of the homes via deflated appraisals pushed by greedy judges and some other politicians, and corrupt county officials. They want appraisals for foreclosed homes to be based on the last county appraisal for property taxes.

Rev. Pamela Pinkney Butts testified that women that are outspoken on public corruption or are going through divorces are also targeted with foreclosure, and that when they complain in good faith, corrupt judges and other politicians will often harass them and arbitrary brand them mentally ill.

Activist Valerie Robinson testified that Blacks are disproportionately targeted with foreclosures and her husband, Dr. Stuart Robinson, testified that illegal foreclosures are lowering the property values in greater Cleveland communities.

Activists Marva and David Patterson of the Carl Stokers Brigade, a longtime local grassroots organization, testified about the need for a federal and state law that require that all reassignments of mortgages and the promissory notes are recorded in the county recorders office because  mortgage companies are foreclosing and many do not own the promissory note required to file a foreclosure complaint in common pleas court pursuant to Ohio case law, or in federal district court.

Activists testified that former county sheriff Bob Reid and his predecessor Gerald McFaul, who resigned office and was later convicted of crimes in office, stole foreclosed homes by having their appraisers illegally reduce the values in violation of state law. They testified that the 34 predominantly White judges of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas , politicians across partisan lines, and Black and White leaders alike either are condoning the impropriety, or overlooking it either due to the benefits they allegedly receive, or for fear of possible retribution. The testimony was replete with public records data to support the activists' claims of theft of foreclosed homes by Reid, who was fired last year as county sheriff by Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate for governor this year.

And activists testified that they want the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure to be amended to exclude the provision where if a foreclosure defendant is not served with a foreclosure complaint that once the mortgage company or bank puts a notice in the legal or daily news that defendant is considered served, and a default judgement can be rendered if they subsequently fail to appear in the foreclosure case.

"That hurts  Black and poor people," said Mariah Crenshaw of Communities United, who testified that Blacks and poor people rarely if at all read the daily news or the legal news to see if a foreclosure complaint or summons or any other civil complaint has been served on them and that the provision of being served by publication as to receipt of a civil complaint or foreclosure helps mortgage companies to take homes without an opportunity for the homeowner to be heard. And even if service by publication made sense, and it doesn't, said Crenshaw, it should be done fairly.

"They aren't required to publicize it in the Plain Dealer Newspaper or the Call and Post Newspaper," said Crenshaw.

Ernest Smith of the Oppressed People's Nation, a grassroots group out of East Cleveland, testified that mortgage companies were stealing homes from East Cleveland in abundance because of a disrespect for Black people. He talked of too many Black women found raped or murdered in or near abandoned homes.

According to a Case Western Reserve University study, one in five homes in East Cleveland, a city with some 18,000 residents, is abandoned.

Bettie Simpson said that she was indicted by a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury on several counts relative to mortgage loans and that she was exonerated of all charges in that trial. She said that while then Cuyahoga County prosecutor Bill Mason, who is now is a partner at the mortgage law firm of Bricker and Eckler, was maliciously prosecuting her and other Blacks, big banks and corrupt mortgage companies were getting away with illegally doing as they please.

Clevelander Al Porter, who testified in support of the Restore Our Neighborhoods Act and said that it is needed to get rid of abandoned homes that cannot be refurbished, recalled how he and other community activists, led by Community Activist Art McKoy, last year climbed through windows of abandoned homes  in East Cleveland looking for dead and missing women and children, an event covered in a subsequent CNN segment on serial murders and violence against women in greater Cleveland.

Porter said after giving his testimony that he and the activists thank Congresswoman Kaptur for sending a representative to the previous housing committee meeting and that they also appreciate the Cleveland NAACP and Congresswoman Fudge, whose representatives met with activists last week in addition to listening to yesterday's  testimonies.

"Community activists want to make presentations before the full body of the Cleveland NAACP, and before Rep. Fudge, Rep. Kaptur and possibly to Congress," said Porter. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)