By Anna Gustafson
Queens residents facing foreclosure could get a big boost in retaining an attorney under a bill passed by state lawmakers last week, state Assemblyman Rory Lancman (D-Fresh Meadows) said.
The Access to Justice in Lending Act, sponsored by Lancman and state Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx), passed the Assembly last week and the Senate in mid-June. Legislators said it would help individuals in foreclosure proceedings because it would force lenders to cover the attorney costs of the borrower should the borrower win the case.
Virtually all mortgage agreements require borrowers to pay attorney’s fees to lenders who foreclose on their mortgage, but borrowers do not have the same contractual right. As a result, few homeowners manage to retain attorneys in foreclosure proceedings and many default or try to represent themselves, Lancman and Klein said.
Had these individuals been able to get adequate legal representation, lawmakers said they frequently could have saved their homes.
“We cannot let people with valid defenses to foreclosure lose their homes merely for lack of legal representation, particularly when the mortgage agreement written by the bank tilts the legal playing field in the bank’s favor,” Lancman said. “If homeowners had the money to pay for a lawyer to represent them in foreclosure, they probably wouldn’t be in foreclosure in the first place. This legislation will allow lawyers to take on meritorious foreclosure cases with the fair and reasonable expectation that they will be compensated if they succeed.”
Lancman and Klein said it was particularly egregious that if an individual lost a foreclosure proceeding, he or she then has the bank’s attorney’s fees tacked on to the overall amount the homeowner owes the bank, pushing them further into debt.
“We know that many of the families that we see being foreclosed upon today entered their mortgages due to predatory lending,” Klein said. “These are the very people who should have the best defenses to foreclosure, but lose their homes simply because they could not secure counsel to defend them. We have put homeowners on an even playing ground with the lenders that are foreclosing on them and given them a fighting chance to stay in their homes.”
Queens has been especially hard hit by foreclosures, and the state Banking Department in mid-June announced Queens County had the second highest number of foreclosure filings in the state. There were 6,267 filings in Queens, second only to Suffolk County on Long Island, which had 8,293. Nassau County on Long Island came in third with 5,755 and Brooklyn fourth with 4,485.
Reach reporter Anna Gustafson by e-mail at agustafson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
