Ongoing economic hardships in 2021 have left many individuals and families living in or near poverty unable to pay their mortgages and accumulating debt just to try to make ends meet. Unsurprisingly, this hardship has fallen starkly along racial lines. The unemployment rate in Ward 8 – where nearly 90% of the residents are Black – is more than double the District average, threatening to widen pre-existing racial wealth and income gaps. Over the course of the last year, our Consumer Law Unit has worked in conjunction with our policy team to blunt the worst of these impacts in individual and systemic ways.
EXTENDING THE FORECLOSURE MORATORIUM
In October, Legal Aid celebrated a monumental victory when the DC Council extended the District’s foreclosure moratorium to February 4, 2022 after an advocacy push from Legal Aid and our partners. Previously, the moratorium was set to expire on November 5. In collaboration with our clients and partner organizations, Legal Aid had urged the District to extend the moratorium, highlighting that the District was slated to receive $50 million in federal funds through the Homeowner Assistance Fund (HAF), a federal relief program designed to help homeowners catch up on missed payments and avoid foreclosure – but that the program had not opened yet and was in fact still awaiting Treasury approval. The DC Council’s passage of the emergency extension prevented avoidable foreclosures from moving forward at a time when federal relief money remained in the pipeline and was critical to preserving Black and Brown homeownership in the District.
Our attorneys, clients, and community partners are continuing to work with the District to minimize barriers to homeowner assistance programs and ensure that HAF will be accessible to DC residents who most need it. We will continue our advocacy to try to ensure that foreclosures do not move forward before homeowners are able to meaningfully access assistance and that critical programs and policies are effectively designed to deliver relief to our client community.
Jose Raul Salamanca & Adela Garcia de Salamanca
Mr. Salamanca and Ms. Garcia de Salamanca began working with Legal Aid in March 2021 after Legal Aid identified them through targeted outreach as former clients that might be eligible for the District’s recently reopened HomeSaver program. The HomeSaver program is a foreclosure prevention program that provides payment assistance to eligible DC homeowners who are behind on their mortgage or other housing-related payments.
The Salamancas, two monolingual Spanish-speaking homeowners, were severely impacted by the pandemic. Ms. Garcia de Salamanca was laid off from her job of almost 30 years as a housekeeper at a hotel in Dupont Circle at the start of the pandemic. Mr. Salamanca was retired and receiving modest Social Security Retirement benefits. Although Ms. Garcia de Salamanca was receiving unemployment insurance, their income was substantially reduced without her employment income. The couple managed to keep up with their mortgage payments for months, but they depleted their savings as a result. When they connected with Legal Aid attorney Jenny Joseph, they were about to default on their mortgage payments.
Jenny worked with the Salamancas to prepare an application for the HomeSaver program, a process that would have been difficult if not impossible for the Salamancas to complete on their own as the District’s application was only available in English, and submitting the required documentation was a challenge for homeowners who had limited access to technology. With Legal Aid’s assistance, the Salamancas were approved for HomeSaver funds to cover their mortgage payments, an immense relief for the family.
“I thank God that I found Jenny and that she—with great specialty knowledge—resolved this case, that she could help me, you know, and relieve that pressure I was feeling when I felt that I could lose my house.”
JOSE RAUL SALAMANCA
The difficulties the Salamancas had in completing the HomeSaver application are just one of many client experiences that have informed Legal Aid’s systemic advocacy this year surrounding the Homeowner Assistance Fund (HAF). With our partners at Legal Counsel for the Elderly, Legal Aid has urged the District to create a HAF program that prioritizes language access, has low barriers to entry, and meets the needs of DC’s most vulnerable homeowners.