Fuck these guys.

The Washington Post had an article by Michael Sallah and Debbie Cenziper about Aeon Financial’s foreclosures. Aeon Financial has no owners, officers, or website, but it has been threatening to foreclose on hundreds of struggling homeowners. Aeon Financial is incorporated in Delaware, but has mail drop boxes in Chicago and is represented by a law firm with an address on an estate near Vail, Colorado. Because all of this makes since.

Naturally, Aeon has been accused of predatory and unlawful practices because of course. They have also been accused by local judges of overbilling. They have pushed to foreclose on more than 700 homes in DC. Aeon is a tax lien company that has little government oversight that moves from city to city with clever lawyers. Aeon employs a ton of different tactics. In the District they sent families threatening letters demanding $5,000 or more in legal fees. In Maryland, they filed 1,000 foreclosure cases in some of the poorest counties. In Cleveland, they took the deeds to dozens of houses and then failed to care for them prompting the city to level 100 code violations. Naturally, the Aeon execs didn’t return any calls about the Washington Post piece.

The District hasn’t been able to determine who owns the company and when city lawyers challenged Aeon to divulge its owners, the company filed a protective order. The Post spent three months looking at Aeon’s corporate history traveling between Chicago, Cleveland, and Maryland. They found that the trail began and ended with a Chicago lawyer named Mark Alan Schwartz. He is Aeon’s lawyer that bought 89 liens worth $65,000 from DC’s public auction. Over the next four years the company became one of the top purchasers in DC.

Aeon has been described as a machine, buying lien after lien and then demanding these high fees and payments showing no sympathy for the clients being foreclosed upon. In 2009, local judges stepped in and found Aeon’s charges unusually high and excessive. In 2010, Aeon stopped buying liens in DC, but they still have 300 active foreclosures. After this they moved to Cleveland, Ohio.

Cleveland,oh Cleveland. Some of you may know that Cleveland was high hard by the foreclosing crisis right off the bat in 2007. That link takes you to an aerial view of where I grew up, Slavic Village (or South Broadway). It is pretty dated though because there is a school shown that has been a vacant leveled lot for at least six months to a year old. However, you can see all the vacant lots, well some there are many more, and with the foliage it is hard to see some of them unless you zoom in close. Although, I think I can count eight. The map also does you as a viewer a disservice because you can’t see which homes are vacant. For example, both of the houses next to my parents’ are vacant, recently one had the aluminum siding stripped off it because aluminum is still worth something, well that and copper. The spray paint on the doors which houses are vacant because of drugs and which one’s are missing the copper because people were stripping it incorrectly and the homes were burning down.

Aeon spent $25 million buying thousands of homes in Cleveland and the surrounding Cuyahoga County. In DC, homeowners tried to pay the fees. In Ohio, we didn’t. I mean that shouldn’t shock anyone. There is no money here. There never has been in the neighborhood I’m showing. Aeon foreclosed on more than 400 properties in Slavic Village. Aeon then couldn’t sell the properties because obviously no one has any money to buy them. The houses were left to rot, which prompted city inspectors to condemn 41 properties and issue 100 code violations. It is hard to describe this kind of decay and the impact it has on those who live there.

One of Aeon’s major lenders was CapitalSource Bank, which was founded in 2000 by John Delaney, who of course was elected to the US House of Representatives. Because where else would the men responsible for this be? One of Delaney’s spokesmen claimed he had no knowledge of the Aeon’s problems in Ohio or DC.

An attorney for Aeon in Cleveland didn’t comment, but over the last year, attorney Kirk Liederbach claimed Aeon had invested heavily in the city and “didn’t contemplate” taking title of so many rundown properties. I can’t say I’m sorry for them. Reap what you sow, buddy. Prey on the weak, vulnerable, and very literally powerless (44105 as some of the lowest property rates in Cuyahoga County making it a Mecca of sorts for the recently released from prison, you know men of color who can’t vote), but you can’t get blood from a stone.

Jay Westbrook, a 33 year member of the Cleveland City Council, says the company refuses to take responsibility, “Aeon has an extra-vicious business model—take no prisoners, take no responsibility.” Aeon is dropping property in Cleveland fast, which has prompted some city council member to question whether the sales are legal or attempts to get out of the fines and violations. Aeon’s lead agent who signed the deeds was John A. Lord, who was permanently disbarred in 2007 for deceiving and abandoning clients and keeping their money. He had no comment either, of course. Lord also signed legal documents to foreclose on homes in Baltimore.

DC officials still don’t know who owns Aeon. Aeon refused to share financial records filing a protective order. The District agreed to stop pressing the issue if Aeon swore the Schwartz’ law firm had no ownership, but Aeon refused again. A judge focused on Aeon’s legal bill saying it is “rife with inaccuracies and vague descriptions.”

The Post continued to do some digging and found the Aeon Properties, the predecessor of Aeon Financial, was run by Schwartz’s younger sister, Stacy Lynn Schwartz, a clinical social worker. To which I scream shenanigans. WTF? A social worker has a code of ethics and values, this woman if she proves to be involved in this should lose her license. In 2011, records should Schwartz listed as a director, as was his sister and a neighbor, Robert Mesch; these records were in Kentucky because why not?

Records show that Axis Investment Holdings Trust, which apparently shares an office with Aeon in Chicago’s Willis Tower, has ownership of both Aeon Financial and Axis Capital. Someone should probably check out Axis Capital. Schwartz is CEO of Axis Capital, which has a subsidiary, Records Direct. The suite in Willis Tower is registered to Records Direct. I’m going to need a flow chart.

In Schwartz’s divorce proceedings it came out that Schwartz and his wife were used to a lush lifestyle, but the economy hurt him. *sads* People in DC think the city should continue to go after Aeon and determine ownership. Nickles, a former DC attorney general, said DC should pursue the case, “This is debt collecting that leads to the destruction of the lower economic level of the community. Anyone who would be behind that kind of scheme—and it was a well-thought-out scheme—I don’t think they would be very happy about their names being disclosed on the public record.”

Names on the public record? That’s the worst we can do to them? I take issue with some of what Nickles says because as long as we employ an economic system that encourages the exploitation of some for the benefit of others I don’t see how what Aeon is doing is different than what Walmart, McDonalds, or any other poverty-wage employer. I’m reminded of that tactic going around after the banks sold all these bad loans, which was refuse to pay until they show you the paperwork. Well, fingers-crossed, DC goes after these bastards and get some kind of results.

Raise DC's Minimum Wage, that is all

This weekend I’ll be writing a paper on raising the minimum wage.  I haven’t seen much movement on raising the minimum wage with all the fake crisis we’ve had.  However, the DC Council has moved to raise the minimum wage  to $11.50, which would be one of the highest minimum wages in the country, of course it is still too low. Benjamin Freed had piece on it for the Washingtonian.  

As a reminder, DC couldn’t force Walmart to pay living wages, but now the DC Council is ready to try again through a city-wide minimum wage hike to $11.50 an hour, which is an increase of $3. Council member Vincent Orange said he’d combine four bills into a final one to be introduced, and the vote would be scheduled for mid-December. Happy Holidays low-wage employees.

Right not DC’s minimum wage is $8.25 an hour, which is only one dollar more than the federal standard. Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, and DC have agreed on a multi-jurisdictional standard at $11.50 per hour.  DC Council voted to override the mayor’s veto in a 7-6 vote. The new bill would raise the minimum wage over three installments reaching $11.50 by July 1, 2016.

A few cities have higher minimum wages including San Francisco that has a minimum wage of $10.76 and rises with inflation. Mike McGinn, Seattle’s Mayor, has proposed raising the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.  Personally, I think the $15 per hour should be the minimum wage and then it should be tied to a living wage standard.

Oh Wal-Mart

A labor post, I know I’m surprised too. With the crazy coming at reproductive rights and the discussion around using the word feminist, I’ve been a bit distracted. Also, final this week, lame I know.

Oh, Wal-Mart, just when I think I won’t be able to find anything to write about this week aside from the “lady issues” you’re there. I can always count on you. I’d thank you, but I find your company and business model exploitative and possibly evil (a word I don’t like using). Alex Barron, a regional general manager for Wal-Mart U.S. wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post. He is responsible for about 90 stores and 30,000 employees in the DC area, and this will include any DC stores. JJ wrote about this yesterday because he's a day ahead of me, but my version has far more sarcasm so there's that. So get ready…because you know those arguments abusers use about how their victims made them do it? That’s what Barron's piece read like.

Barron argues that Wal-Mart has been acting in good faith to bring jobs to the District and continuing an open dialogue with the residents, stakeholders, critics, and elected officials. They increased their stores from four to six and from 1,200 jobs to 1,800 to expand and serve under-served communities.

And break: What he means by this last part is make money off the poor by driving out all other business and then increasing prices. They’ve done it before.

Barron actually began his piece with this gem, “Unfortunately, the District may soon adopt legislation that discriminated against business and threatens to undo all that we have accomplished together.” End scene. I actually giggled when I read that. Corporations, they are the real victims here, luckily they have the Supreme Court on their side.

Barron notes that Wal-Mart’s polling supports what they heard, “73 percent of residents were ‘in favor’ of Wal-Mart.” I’m in favor of Wal-Mart closing all their unsafe overseas factories and ceasing their exploitation of workers at large, but I’m guessing that isn’t what he and their polling meant.

As a result Wal-Mart rolled out a Community Partnership Initiative and shared it with the city. Mayor Vincent C. Grey (D) said then, “this agreement represents an unprecedented, citywide commitment from a retailer…Wal-Mart is showing what it means to be a good corporate neighbor, and I encourage other firms interested in doing business in the District of Columbia to show a similar level of commitment to our residents.”

Barron is very proud that this document was voluntary, and Wal-Mart weren’t accepting any tax incentives, even though he stressed some of their projects qualified for government assistance. He also notes, “our agreement spelled out our plans to stock local products, allow space for local retailers, provide good jobs, ensure an inclusive construction process, fund transportation measures, create a citywide job-training program and support nonprofits to help fulfill unmet needs throughout the city.”

Slow clap for Wal-Mart, folks. However, Wal-Mart is threatening to not open three of the six planned stores if DC raising the minimum wage to $12.50. Barron says this (and it is so great), “…[S]ome members of the DC Council are advancing an eleventh-hour effort to try to undermine our efforts and change the way businesses like Wal-Mart must operate in the city. New legislation—the Large Retailer Accountability Act (LRAA)—would require that a few large employers pay a starting rate that is more than $5 per hour above the minimum wage.” He goes on to call the legislation discriminatory.

Take a minute. These lefties are picking on Wal-Mart. Quick someone get Scalia to issue a statement defending the corporation from the elected City Council. One particularly concerning line from Barron is “For months, we have chosen to use hard facts, statistical evidence and common sense—instead of idle threats—to educate DC Council about the negative consequences of the LRAA.” Let’s all agree Wal-Mart shouldn’t educate anyone. Also, these consequences are a direct result from Wal-Mart’s refusal to comply with the legislation. If the legislation passes, Wal-Mart opens fewer stores, resulting in the under-served sectors, and low employment, etc.

Barron says Wal-Mart will not open three of the six planned stores if LRAA is passed. He also threatens the stores currently under construction saying they will have to “review the financial and legal implications of the bill on those projects.”

Come on DC, pass this bill. Wal-Mart has a variety of awful consequences for the communities they force their way into. I also really love that this situation brings to the conversation corporate interests verses employees. Wal-Mart claims discrimination because they would have to pay a living wage to their employees. It is that simple. Wal-Mart has a vested interest in keeping their employees in poverty and their profits up. 

LRAA passed DC's Council 8-5 vote at the end of the day on Wednesday. 

DC police traumatize victims of sexual assault

I read this one on Salon by Natasha Lennard. Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report on Thursday that describes the treatment of victims of sexual assault by the DC police as “callous, traumatizing treatment.” The 197-page investigation entitled, “Capitol Offense: Police Mishandling of Sexual Assault Cases in the District of Columbia,” is rooted in the testimony or 150 sexual assault survivors, community groups, victims’ advocates, hospital staff, and university counselors.

 

HRW found consistent patterns of police officers failing to file incident reports (this is required to proceed with an investigation) or classifying serious sexual assault as a lesser crime. Police incident reports couldn’t be found for 35.6% of people who had reported being sexually assaulted and reported it to DC Metropolitan Police Department according to hospital records.

 

“Human Rights Watch reviewed dates of all sexual assault reports made at Washington Hospital Center, where sexual assault victims are sent for forensic examinations, and compared them to sexual assault cases opened by the police department between October 2008 and September 2011. More than 200 cases, or over 40 percent of cases reviewed, appear never to have been documented or properly investigated.”

 

WTF is going on? HRW says a major factor in the police’s failure to follow up on sexual assault report is a refusal to take victims and their testimony seriously:

“In some cases, police questioned survivors’ credibility and actively discouraged victims from reporting or providing forensic evidence…Law enforcement personnel threatened victims with prosecution if they were found to be lying, asked questions that implied that the victims were to blame, and told victims their stories were not serious enough to investigate.”

Some survivors said reporting the assault was more traumatizing than the rape. This sentiment was echoed by a complaint form sent to the Office of Police Complaints, which reads, “I think that filing the report was just as traumatic as the crime, if not more…Is it common place for the police to put blame on the sexual assault victims and then completely ignore them?”

 

One nurse gave testimony describing a patient’s treatment to HRW, “in 2010 a detective said of a patient who was found unconscious in a hotel room with five men, with severe tears to her vagina and rectum that required emergency surgery, ‘Well, she could have fallen on rocks and may not have had panties on. Also, what kind of girl is in a room with five guys?’”

 

The report doesn’t blame the an official district policy for the mistreatment, but says the officers and the culture are to blame [rape culture, maybe?], “[P]olicies have long existed requiring that all sex abuse cases be documented and investigated and requiring sensitivity to the needs of victims. The central problem has been with implementation of those policies and department practice that would appear not to treat these cases appropriately,” HRW stated. They are recommending the DC Mayor and City Council create independent oversight task force.

 

MPD Chief Cathy Lanier is not pleased claiming the report has a flawed methodology. She is claiming that researchers have misinterpreted the department’s numbers. I imagine she means by accessing and analyzing them. Lanier claims that the HRW report only included 571 incident reports over a three year period, but that the department shared 1,080 incident reports with HRW, but the extra reports, which involved children or minor sex crimes like groping were not under the purview of MPD’s Sexual Assault Unit, and excluded from the study. So before when we were talking about MPD misclassifying sexual assaults as lesser crimes could explain some of this or in the reverse as well. The MPD had an advanced copy of the report.

 

Lanier believes this report will make victims more reluctant to report, “What is extremely troubling is that MPD believes that after HRW packs up and leaves their press conference that this report will make some of our most vulnerable victims here in the District of Columbia, the victims of sexual abuse, even more reluctant to report their abuses to the police.”

 

The Washington City Paper pulled some of the worst behaviors from the report. Read at your own risk below [trigger warning]:

 

A married woman is told police will her husband that she was raped unless she drops the investigation: When one married victim, Laura T., attempted to report her sexual assault in late 2011, the detective told her he would have to inform her husband in order to proceed with this investigation. “I then asked him please don’t and he said ok—and then handed me a form to deny ongoing investigation [decline an investigation] so therefore I signed it.”

 

Police refuse to investigate a case because of a lack of victim testimony, even though the victim is barely conscious: The complainant was under the influence and had to be woken with an ammonia capsule to be interviewed at the hospital. The case was filed as “office information” because “The complainant did not report a sexual assault.” The police file contained no indication of follow-up with the complainant.

 

Police blame a runaway for being in a position to be assaulted: Medical staff overheard a detective tell an 18-year-old runaway who was assaulted in the middle of the night, “You shouldn’t have been outside. This is what happens at two in the morning. What do you expect?”

 

A female detective compares dirty talk in her own marriage to a victim’s rape: The detective who interviewed Susan D. made several references to her own personal history during the interview. When Susan said she was uncomfortable when her assailant made references to her “tight white pussy,” the detective said, “Honey, that’s not anything. I’m half-white and my husband says that kind of thing to me all the time.”

 

Officers arrest some reporting victims for outstanding warrants: Upon conducting a WALES [Washington Area Law Enforcement database] check, [the complainant] was found to be wanted on a bench warrant. [Complainant] was placed under arrest.

 

My mind is blown. I’m really angry, but I don’t know exactly how to proceed. Lanier has a point, this report could discourage some victims from reporting, but I can’t imagine any more victims than already discouraged by the police themselves. But another, more cynical part of me, thinks this good, now we know what is coming. Victims have to be in the right mental state to report an assault or even talk about it. Knowing you have to be on the offensive might help in that respect. Of course, it does nothing for my distrust of law enforcement.

DC's homeless families problem

The greater DC area still has a homeless problem, shocking I know. However, the types of homeless people has shifted in the last few years, really since the Great Recession (which we’re capitalizing now) from individuals to families. I may have written about this earlier, maybe last year when the numbers were first coming out.

The Washington Post did a write up about the plight of one woman and her children as they interacted with Janice Coe, a homeless advocate in Loudoun County. This might sound a little tongue and cheek or even snarky, but that isn’t how I mean it. Well not entirely. I do find it frustrating that media rarely cares about the homeless, even the homeless families, unless they are involved in some way with conventionally functioning people, but that is not to diminish Coe’s work. Just my overall frustration we let anyone live homeless.

Anyway, Annie Gowen’s article detailed the living situation of the young mother, her 2-year old son, and 2-month old. Coe came across them sleeping in the New Carrollton Metro station (you know where that is); Coe arranged for the family to stay at a Comfort Suites hotel in Virginia. Coe called shelters.

Coe came up blank. No one could take the family. The DC area is one of the most affluent areas in the nation, yet homeless families are on the rise leaving no only adults without a place to sleep, but also young children (before mentioned 2-month old). The fallout from the Great Recession continues and the lack of affordable housing there has been an increase of 18% in family homelessness this year and 23% since the recession began. With the onsite of winter, the situation becomes more dangerous. People will freeze to death if this winter is like last years. 

DC has recently come under fire for turning away families seeking help as 118 overflow beds which were added last winter to DC main family homeless shelter sit empty. A few places have opened up, but more than 500 families are waiting for housing. The director of DC’s Department of Human Services David A Burns said, “We’re hoping we can keep pace with those in the more dire situations.”

Berns is trying to keep the beds open for hypothermia season, which begins November 1^st. DC is mandated by law to shelter its residents if the temperature falls below freezing. Berns also asserts the agency doesn’t have the money to operate he extra beds.  DC Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) is not buying it. He wonders why the beds are vacant when DC has a $140 million budget surplus; saying, “Never did I imagine that beds would be kept vacant. It’s very upsetting.”

The estimate of homeless people has stayed steady around 11,800 according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which included some 3,388 children.

Nassim Moshiree, a lawyer for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless said, “These families are the most desperate because they have young children and have nowhere to go.”

Antonia Fasanelli, executive director for the Homeless Persons Representation Project, a Maryland legal services and advocacy group based in Baltimore said, “It’s a complete abomination. There is just not enough space.” She is referring to the closure of three shelters in Baltimore, which resulted in the loss of 100 beds. Fasaneli noted that 38% of homeless families are living on the streets and that’s the 7^th highest rate of unsheltered families in the county according to the Department of Urban Development study. 

I have no solutions here, which is unfortunate. Well, except service. We could serve the homeless, but attempting to find a group to work with has left me unimpressed in DC.