Homeowners facing foreclosure who have been the victims of fraud have little hope of obtaining justice or financial restitution. That was the message of Lionel Ouellette, executive director of the New York City-based advocacy group Changer. He was speaking to a grim-faced group of about thirty Hispanic and African-American homeowners at a community center in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York last winter.
Nobody at the meeting had the resources to hire a lawyer for complex legal cases, said Ouellette, a 35-year-old former schoolteacher who became a housing counselor after falling victim to a scam that involved predatory loans and concealed damage in a house he purchased in 2001.
Read more from the Nation
