American Banker Mortgagor Demands Moratorium
May 19th, 2010
Foreclosure Moratorium or Bust
An Ohio man facing eviction from his foreclosed home has gone to extreme lengths to call attention to his plight and that of other homeowners in distress.
On Sunday afternoon, Keith Sadler and five activist friends locked themselves inside his Toledo-area home and are refusing to leave until a moratorium on foreclosures is declared in Wood County, Ohio.
"We tried working all these avenues, and we feel like the system is geared toward the banks and not the people, so we felt we needed to take matters into our own hands," Sadler told American Banker. "The only other option for them is to come in and drag us out."
Sadler's two-bedroom, one-bath home in Stony Ridge, which is just outside Toledo, was sold to the owner of the mortgage, State Bank and Trust Co., in a January sheriff's sale for $33,333.34, according to the Wood County sheriff's office.
Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn said he has a court order to hand the house over to the bank, a subsidiary of $653 million-asset Rurban Financial Corp. of Defiance, Ohio. Wasylyshyn said he plans to execute the order but would not say when.
Wasylyshyn said he gave Sadler plenty of time to move out and that he had agreed to leave the property by midnight Sunday.
"I'm just disappointed in him that he gave me his word that he was going to move out and he didn't," the sheriff said.
If Sadler leaves the property without incident, he will not be arrested. However, if he refuses to leave, he will face arrest, the sheriff said.
Sadler, a co-founder of the Toledo Foreclosure Defense League, said he and the others in the house are prepared to stay for as long as is necessary.
"We made preparations to bring in enough water, food, to last us so we can wait them out," he said.
Sadler said he received his first foreclosure notice in January 2009 after falling about four months behind on payments.
He had been out of work from his job at Dana Holding Corp., an auto parts maker, due to arthritis surgery on his hand. When he received the foreclosure notice, he was preparing for a second surgery.
Sadler requested a loan modification, but he was told his debt-to-income ratio was too high, and it was denied.
Mark Klein, the president and chief executive officer of State Bank and Trust, said the bank considered "all possible avenues" to keep Sadler in his home but that, in the end, an agreeable solution could not be reached.
"We honor and attempt to bring all opportunities available to keep people in their homes," Klein said. "But when there's virtually no source of income to pay a loan, it becomes incumbent upon the bank to protect the assets of the bank and its shareholders."
Sadler, who has been communicating with the media through a two-inch hole in the front of the house, said he is encouraged, and even a little surprised, by all the attention he has received. Media inquiries have come from as far away as England, he said.
Sadler has also been uploading videos documenting his struggle onto websites like YouTube.
"This action is really not about my house," he said. "We need people to take their communities back, away from the banks and the corporations … because they don't serve the people."
About Safeguard
Safeguard Properties is the largest privately held field services company in the country. Located in Cleveland, Ohio and founded in 1990 by Robert Klein, Safeguard has grown from a regional preservation company with a few employees and a handful of contractors performing services in the Midwest, to a national company with over 700 employees. Safeguard is supported by a nationwide network of subcontractors able to perform any requested superintendence, preservation, and maintenance functions, as well as numerous ancillary services in the U.S., the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.