Rose Prophete sits outside on the steps of her brick townhouse, Thursday, July 28, 2022, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Prophete, a hospital technician who immigrated from Haiti in February 2000, was blindsided with a foreclosure action on the home she worked three jobs to buy and said"I will fight until my last breath."
Some of these homeowners say they weren't even aware they had a second mortgage because of confusing loan structures. Others believed their second loans were rolled in with their first mortgage payments or forgiven. Typically, they say they had not received statements on their second loans for years as they paid down their first mortgages.
Attorneys for owners of the loans and the companies that service them argue that they are pursuing legitimately owed debt, no matter what the borrower believed. And they say they are acting legally to claim it.Court actions now can be traced to the tail end of the housing boom earlier this century. Some involve home equity lines of credit.
“Despite everything, we are fighting and trusting justice, keeping our faith in God, so we can solve this and keep the house,” Mendez said in Spanish.