Local

A Month After Eviction, Neighbors to Put Retired Police Officers Back in Her Home


Neighbors and local activists help family to take boards off their vacant home and move them back in after more than a month after their unlawful eviction

Chicago, IL–(ENEWSPF)–August 17, 2013.  Rallying around retired police officer Pat Hill, neighbors and local supporters of the former Bronzeville homeowner plan to move her back into her boarded up home. More than a month ago, heavily armed Cook County sheriffs put Hill and her tenants out of their home, evicting her a second time even while the Bank of New York Mellon, which had foreclosed on Hill’s mortgage, denied any involvement in this eviction.

Hill and her tenants were given only a few minutes to collect a personal items before representatives from the bank boarded up her home. For more than thirty days, they have been without the clothes, medication, and other personal possessions still left inside the building, as representatives from the bank have failed to give them a time in which they could collect what remained inside boarded up home.

“I thank my neighbors for taking the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S Constitution to heart, that the people have to act when the government is abusing people,” explained former homeowner Pat Hill. “We’ve been in a difficult situation for the past month.”

At the same time, local residents have also raised concerns about neighborhood safety, with Hill’s home adding to the number of vacant properties within walking distance of a Chicago public school. A recent study found that each day at least seven crimes are committed on the premises of the tens of thousands of vacant properties in Cook County, many of them concentrated in the city’s South and West sides. Friends of Ms. Hill have also raised concern that since her eviction, no one has come by to keep up with the property and they have had to cut the grass and pick up trash. Prior to her eviction, they had long planned to join her at her home for their annual commemoration of Jamaican born activist Marcus Garvey.

“When I think of all the things the bank has put this family though, it breaks my heart,” said friend and Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign organizer Shirley Henderson. “What I don’t understand is why they keep putting her out when she has said again and again she wants to stay and find a way to work with them.” 

Ms Hill was first evicted on March 9th, 2012, but with support from the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign and Occupy Our Homes Chicago, she was able to convince representatives from the bank to keep her in her home. She demonstrated that after more than a year of seeking to resolve a dispute regarding her mortgage, Ms Hill found that Bank of New York Mellon had foreclosed on her  and that her home had been sold at a Sheriff’s sale for $170,000, nearly half of what she owed on it. 

After standing with Hill and her tenants during their evictions, and than re-eviction, activists with the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign have since found that there is no law justifying the re-eviction Hill and her tenants endured on July 10th. Instead, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart initially refused to carry out this re-eviction, but the lawyers for Bank of New York Mellon, Kleuver and Platt, charged the Sheriff’s office with contempt of court.  They also found that in a statement to Fox 32, Bank of New York Mellon claimed to be playing no role in this eviction, even though they were listed as the landlord on both eviction orders.

Rather than an isolated case, campaign activists have found this to be one more example of the gross violation of human rights that have taken place during the course of the housing crisis. Not only have millions of families been evicted across the country, but in Chicago, homeowners have regularly been defrauded out of their homes, while purported solutions like the Cook County Mediation Program, have done little to nothing to assist those facing homelessness. 

What: Rally to move homeowner and tenants back into their home

When: Saturday, August 17th at 11:15 a.m.

Where: Hill family home, 3811 S. Wabash Ave. Chicago, IL 60653

For more information, contact the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign 773-236-0559

 

 


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