At a board meeting early in my career, I proudly presented a carefully crafted plan to leverage public funds, employ inner city workers, clean up polluted urban land, and integrate the building trades at the same time. I was crushed when an African American community organizer on the board gruffly demanded, “Why do you always want to make the black man clean up your mess?”

We made some changes, she became an enthusiastic supporter, and I still laugh at the memory of my 20-something self, blindsided by the realization that someone with a background nothing like mine might interpret our idea so differently. I’m white, grew up in New Jersey, and was newly married, childless and with a freshly-minted Master’s degree when I got to know this long-time Milwaukee activist, a single mother with five kids. She and I learned a lot from each other.

Diversity matters. I now serve on the board of the national think tank Demos, bringing to a group that largely lives in bigger, more vibrant cities the perspective from a more troubled industrial heartland. And as director of the state think tank Policy Matters Ohio, I answer to a board that, in part because it has people from varied backgrounds, teaches me something at every meeting.

Recently a newspaper editorial board made up of four white men attacked Policy Matters as biased because four of our 14 board members have been or are elected union leaders. It got me thinking about the challenges and rewards of diverse leadership that includes worker advocates and the limits of the newspaper’s more narrow perspective. A recent report from Demos confirms that leaving out working and middle-income people skews priorities.

Take a retired banker, a farmworker organizer, a children’s advocate and an economist. It’s not a joke, it’s a description of some of the people who help me figure out how to create an Ohio economy that works for all. Others include a political scientist, the president of the union representing nurses and janitors, an adult worker training expert, an author who writes about racial and generational divides, a local labor leader, some smart retirees, the chief financial officer of a private college, a community organizer, a neighborhood revitalization specialist and a human service non-profit director.

It’s a healthy mix of women and men, African-American, white, Latino and Asian leaders, people who’ve lived all over and have deep roots in Ohio. They have amazing insights, vigorous discussions, and sometimes spirited debates. With such varied perspectives, differences of opinion are inevitable, and usually peacefully resolved.

I’m proud that organized labor has a say, along with community, academic and business voices. Having helped secure decent wages, retirement benefits, health insurance, workplace safety, overtime pay and, as the bumper sticker says, the weekend, labor has a special role to play. You probably work for a living and pay your rent or mortgage from your bi-weekly paycheck. If so, it’s in part thanks to the labor movement. And if, like too many of us, you don’t make enough to pay for essentials and stay debt-free, it might be because powerful elites have often crushed the voice of workers.

My board and similarly diverse staff have identified the need to research jobs and job quality, poverty and how to escape it, education and training, and what the public sector provides and how to pay for it. They’ve helped craft and advocate for recommendations that will make Ohio more prosperous, equitable, sustainable and inclusive. They’ve done that in part because of their varied backgrounds.

The leadership of most major institutions neglects labor and community, often leaving out black, Latino, Asian and even women’s voices. The newspaper that attacked us may be particularly monolithic, but the National Association of Black Journalists counted only a few dozen African-American senior editors and publishers at newspapers nationwide in 2010. If newspaper editorial boards were more diverse, maybe considering how policy affects working people would be seen not as promoting bias but as preventing it. I’ve been through an argument or two, because I talk to people who walk in other shoes, who bring passion to the quest to better include the excluded. I’ll take our fights over a more uniform conversation any day.

A few months ago—right up until Election Day—many of our people messaged and pontificated like crazy to point out that there are serious and profound differences between the two political parties. This past election was presented as the ultimate Pepsi Challenge©; in a blind-folded taste test, Native people chose Barack Obama and Democrats 2 to 1!!

A few years ago, I was one of those people—I worked on the President’s campaign and honestly thought that we were entering a new generation of progressive politics, where Democrats moved back to respecting our people and the Earth.  But at that time, I didn’t get the punchline of the Pepsi Challenge, the fine print that we never hear on the commercials:

“Whichever you choose will still kill you.”

That is, whichever choice you make—Pepsi or Coke—both are horrible choices.  YES, one might taste better to you—you dig the spiciness of Coke or prefer to catch the wave of Pepsi.  Still, when you finish that refreshing can of pop, you’ve just ingested exactly the same high fructose corn syrup, brominated vegetable oils.  Both brands will kill your teeth, makes you fat, causxe erectile dysfunction, etc etc…No matter which one you choose, both Coke AND Pepsi do that.  Therefore, while one might be nominally better, they both kill you.

And just like pop kills Native people disproportionately, this Keystone XL pipeline will disproportionately affect Native sacred sites, unmarked Native grave sites, our aboriginal homelands.

We’re seeing that same scenario play out in politics with the Keystone XL Pipeline.  The party that issupposed to bepro-environment, the Democrats, are working hand-in-hand with the party thatunabashedly loves scorching the Earth, the Republicans, to absolutely kill any possibility of yours and my grandchildren and great-grandchildren having a quality of life that even remotely approaches ours.

Make no mistake, our grandchildren are screwed if this thing goes through.  The Keystone XL pipeline and our dependence upon fossil fuels generally will ensure that.  ThinkSoylent Green. ThinkChildren of Men.  ThinkPlanet of the Apes, except with no talking apes (I don’t think). As we speak, the supposedlydifferentDemocrats and Republicans areconspiring together to kill the Earth, trample over Native burial grounds and sacred sites. In fairness, President Obama has noted that the Keystone XL pipeline is not a major job creator, and perhaps that will be a basis for rejecting this especially since some68% of his voters disapprove of this project.

I hope so.

Still, as noted previously, the President effectively gave himself cover when the State Department rubber-stamped the environmental impact statement and said the pipeline would have “no significant impact to the environment,”

Pepsi and Coke will both kill us—there really is no choice.  Instead, we need to drink water, a radical choice, in order to live.  Similarly, we need to start earnestly looking for a radical option to the political parties that are killing us—the Green Party, Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke, help us please!! Funny, the things that get characterized as “radical” are the ones that will keep us alive.

We fell for the political Pepsi Challenge—God help us all.  God help our kids, Native and non-Native, even more—they’re gonna need it.

Contact your Senator –the information is here.  Tell them “no.”

Last November, Maria del Rocio “Rocio” Almanza Quiroz collapsed just one day before she was scheduled to appear for a biometrics examination to adjust her immigration status under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Rocio, an undocumented immigrant, had succumbed to a viral illness that entered her brain, causing life-threatening swelling. As an undocumented immigrant, Rocio did not qualify for Medicaid and the Arizona hospital treating her tried to avoid paying for her care. Instead, the hospital tried to convince Rocio’s husband to allow it to disconnect her from life support, drive her across the border into Mexico, and leave her there―a practice often called medical deportation―without guarantee that any Mexican hospital could or would care for her. In response, Rocio’s family has worked frantically to raise money to pay for her care while the hospital continues to threaten to “dump” her elsewhere.

Unlike Rocio, many undocumented immigrants have been unable to avoid medical deportation. In recent years, over 800 cases have been documented across more than a dozen states. Medical deportation, or medical repatriation, is a practice in which hospitals forcibly send uninsured, undocumented immigrants in need of long-term care back to their home countries, outside of the federal immigration system, in order to save costs. Victims of this practice pay a very high price—many get sicker while others ultimately die.

Disturbingly, according to a report recently published by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall School of Law entitled Discharge, Deportation, and Dangerous Journeys: A Study on the Practice of Medical Repatriation, advocates know medical deportations are only likely to increase in the coming years as a result of deep flaws in our health and immigration systems. In fact, recent attempts at reform may actually increase the prevalence of the practice.

The President’s landmark Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act (ACA) pledges to insure 30 million uninsured American citizens. Accordingly, the law drastically reduces a pool of federal funding that compensates hospitals for the care they provide to uninsured and underinsured patients—the theory being that as more people become insured, this funding will no longer be as necessary. Unfortunately, many people, including many undocumented immigrants, will remain uninsured in spite of health reform. This loss of funding will be especially devastating to safety-net hospitals that provide the bulk of care to the publicly insured and uninsured. In addition, the ACA wholly excludes undocumented immigrants, who will not be able to purchase insurance through the Exchanges―even with their own money.

On top of that, the President announced last summer that even deferred action-eligible undocumented immigrants (the so-called DREAMers), who typically would qualify for federal benefits programs, will be barred from buying insurance or receiving subsidies through the Exchanges and from participating in Medicaid. Separate immigration reform proposals issued last month by a bipartisan group of senators and the President would provide undocumented immigrants with a pathway to obtain provisional legal status and citizenship but would still bar them from participating in federal public benefit programs like Medicaid.

Given this, options like medical repatriation will become more and more tempting to hospitals. After all, the cost of purchasing a one-way flight on a privately-chartered plane—as many hospitals already do to transport undocumented immigrants back to their home countries—is far lower than the costs of caring for a critically or terminally ill or injured person for weeks, months, or even years.

These medical repatriations occur completely outside the federal immigration process, allowing hospitals to avoid any governmental oversight or accountability. Moreover, they do so without the informed consent of patients—many of whom do not speak English—and without notifying them of the potential immigration consequences of deportation. For example, undocumented immigrants who leave the US may be banned from reentry for up to ten years, and those who may have been eligible for an adjustment of status prior to their departure will lose that eligibility.

To stop this practice, we need systemic change. There is no better time than now, when the  prospect of immigration reform is on the horizon. To start, Congress should create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and repeal laws that impose bars to Medicaid benefits based on immigration status. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should promulgate regulations that prohibit and impose sanctions on any hospital that performs an involuntary repatriation and establish a system by which hospitals must document and report international patient transfers. Hospitals should be required to seek informed consent from patients or their representatives prior to any medical deportation and receive information about the immigration and health consequences of such a transfer.

Reform of this country’s health and immigration systems must be inclusive and honor the human dignity of all. Otherwise, immigrants will always be subject to limited access to care, discrimination, marginalization, and denial of full participation in American society.

And for some, the absence of this much-needed reform will mean the denial of life altogether.

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New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) advances equality and civil rights, with a focus on health justice, disability rights and environmental justice, through the power of community lawyering and partnerships with the private bar. Through community lawyering, NYLPI puts its legal, policy and community organizing expertise at the service of New York City communities and individuals. NYLPI’s partnership with the private bar strengthens its advocacy and connects community groups and nonprofits with critical legal assistance. NYLPI is the recipient of the 2010 New York Times Awards for Nonprofit Excellence.

History will soon define the ongoing foreclosure crisis as one of the single greatest transfers of wealth in the US from middle and working class communities and communities of color to large financial institutions and wealthy investors and speculators. Instead of homeownership being associated with a hopeful pathway to the middle class for millions of people, the last five years have associated it with the loss of home, the loss of a family’s life savings and assets, the loss of financial security, and the loss of neighborhood stability.

It will take decades for families and communities to recover. While the fraud and irresponsibility of the financial sector in precipitating this crisis is undisputable, people still blame themselves for their losses. Shame and self-doubt compound the suffering of seniors on fixed incomes who were victims of mortgage theft, children who live with the indelible sense of instability and stress, families set back in their dreams and hopes, and people knocked down at their most vulnerable times.

While these families have struggled, banks have made record profits and not one executive has been sent to jail for their role in the foreclosure crisis. Imagine if it were different and if those responsible for the “wild wild west” of mortgage lending — all the way up the chain of command — were held to account. What if the perpetrators actually had to make whole the millions of people who were harmed? What if Main Street was bailed out by Wall Street?

We can look back to the Savings and Loan Crisis of the mid-1980s for a few ideas. It was a smaller scale crisis, but people went to jail and strong regulations followed. One meaningful forward-thinking resolution that came out of this crisis was the creation of Affordable Housing Program (AHP). Funded with 10% of the net income of Federal Home Loan Banks each year, AHP now describes itself as “one of the largest private sources of grant funds for affordable housing in the United States.” The program has contributed over $4.6 billion to affordable housing since 1990. While these funds were tiny compared to the scale of the Savings and Loan Crisis, the program’s funds have built more than 776,000 housing units, of which 60% are for very low-income residents.

Imagine if one of policy responses to the current foreclosure crisis was for major banks to give significant grant funds to support the development and preservation of affordable housing in hard hit communities. To date, most of the corrective measures taken have involved a hodgepodge of federal and state programs and legal settlements that have had very little clear impact in these communities. Instead, a meaningful response could be to ensure that families and seniors in the hardest hit communities could access quality stable affordable housing to rebuild their economic and emotional lives, and start to save again.

Instead, families are facing skyrocketing rents, a flat economy, a potential federal sequester which would cut hundreds of thousands of people off rent supports, and local jurisdictions that have limited resources to intervene in distressed neighborhoods or prevent homelessness.

To add insult to injury, some of the very people that cooked up the fraudulent secondary mortgage market schemes that fueled the housing bubble and bust, are now spearheading the massive real estate investment buying spree of bank owned single family homes. Banks are giving hundreds of millions of dollars in lines of credits for these firms to purchase thousands of homes in cash. Companies like Blackstone Group fix up and rent the properties, generating revenue while the property values appreciate. Then they will probably turn around and sell those properties, and another wave of displacement will hit our communities. And so the story goes, the cycle of asset theft and plundering will continue with no regard for creating new paths for affordable homeownership.

In the absence of such a comprehensive program, many community organizations are creating exciting and innovative pilot programs that could change this course with the right support. A number of groups are trying strategies to buy properties facing foreclosure at market value from the banks, and reselling the homes back to their owners or renters with a mortgage that they can actually afford. Boston Community Capital’s SUN Initiative has successfully launched such a program, and saved over 300 Massachusetts residents from eviction.  This is a clear and feasible approach to avoid the cycle of loss and displacement, and keep people in their homes.

However, none of these programs will get to scale unless the government takes action to right these wrongs and banks commit to reinvesting in these communities. The cycle of wealth draining from middle income and working class communities and communities of color will continue unless the government holds CEO’s and institutions responsible, and creates programs and policies to jumpstart a safe affordable housing market that meets people needs.

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Amie Fishman is the Executive Director of East Bay Housing Organizations (EBHO) in Oakland, California. EBHO is a 29-year old non-profit membership organization dedicated to preserving, protecting, and expanding affordable housing opportunities for the lowest income communities through education, advocacy, and coalition-building.

While banks want us to believe that the foreclosure crisis is over, an examination of underwater borrowers and short sales signals another wave in the foreclosure tsunami that is devastating communities across the country.  There have been few programs created to reduce principal on loans where borrowers owe more than the house is worth. Even when those programs are up and running, principal reduction loan modifications are few and far between for struggling homeowners.

In Oakland, California, there are currently over 20,000 underwater borrowers—many of whom are at risk of losing their homes.  Bobbie Spires has been living in her home in the Maxwell Park neighborhood of Oakland, a long-time enclave of African American homeowners, for nearly twenty years. Since Spires and her husband–now deceased–purchased their home, they have housed more than ten foster children, their four children, and many extended family members. Despite applying for a loan modification five times and increasing her income, Bank of America refuses to offer Spires a loan modification.

“I call and I call, and get no response. The stress is complicating my health and it makes me just want to short sale and walk away,” Spires explains. “Sooner or later, I have to know what’s happening to my home—can I keep it or not? I have to figure out where I’m supposed to live if I lose my home.”

On Spires’ block, two of her neighbors have also been forced to consider short-sales because of the lack of other options. These Maxwell Park neighbors are typical of many distressed homeowners in Oakland who are forced into short sales to end the stress and frustration of the foreclosure process. This problem also extends statewide, as a recent survey by the California Reinvestment Coalition reveals that over a third of responding housing counselors report that banks pressure homeowners to do short sales where a loan modification seemed possible.

Last year’s $26 billion settlement agreement with the nation’s largest loan servicers promised the distribution of relief to homeowners, most significantly through a commitment to reduce $12 billion in principal for California’s underwater homeowners.  However, reports from the settlement’s national and state monitors suggest that banks are disproportionately utilizing the giant loophole of short sales as a way to meet the settlement requirements. To date, over 52% of the settlement payout has been in the form of short sales while only 16% has gone to principal reduction on the primary loan.  

Short sales may be the best solution for some underwater homeowners who are facing severe economic distress.  But we are very concerned that banks are using short sales as a short cut to foreclosure, or prioritizing short sales when they could be offering sustainable loan modifications that keep people in their homes.

As a result, in Oakland, short sales without a notice of default initiating the foreclosure process are becoming a growing trend.  The percent of short sales closed and pending has jumped 18% this year.  Undoubtedly, this trend is happening in other cities across the country. Without a notice of default filed publicly, local jurisdictions and advocacy groups have no direct way to reach out to distressed homeowners, inform them of their rights and connect them to appropriate legal and housing counseling services. Recently it appears that banks are releasing data to realtors who have incentives to steer people into short sales, but not to the groups who could help people keep their homes.

There has been enough displacement and upheaval in the city of Oakland in the last few years. From 2007 to 2012, there were over 11,000 completed foreclosures in Oakland, with 1 in 14 households facing the threat of foreclosure.  This massive displacement of families and long-time residents destabilizes neighborhoods, contributes to public safety issues, hurts local property tax revenues, and stalls economic recovery.  A recent report by Urban Strategies Council estimated that Oakland’s foreclosure crisis has cost the city and its residents $875 million.

The foreclosure crisis and prevalence of short sales is changing the faces of homeowners in Oakland.  Investors have purchased 65 to 88% of Oakland’s residential foreclosed properties and 93% of these properties are in low-income neighborhoods.  At a time when home prices are affordable for families with modest incomes, investors paying cash are crowding out potential first-time buyers, and raising rental prices as they take control of the rental market. Homeownership has become less accessible and housing has become more expensive, driving a wedge in the class disparities and economic inequities that already exist.

We are calling on banks to behave as good neighbors in communities like Oakland.  Banks should work with local foreclosure prevention efforts to ensure that delinquent homeowners have access to counseling services. Further, they should work with housing counselors toward creative loan modifications and refinancing solutions that can preserve long-term stability, instead of steering people into short sales. This goal benefits both distressed homeowners and the original mortgage investors, who gain nothing from short sales in a depressed market.

It is past time for the financial institutions to take responsibility for what they have wrought and employ strategies that prevent further displacement and keep families in their homes.

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The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) is a multi-cultural, statewide grass roots organizing network fighting to raise the voices of California’s working class communities through organizing, action and advocacy.  East Bay MoveOn is an advocacy organization that has formed a working group to assist in issue analysis and develop advocacy efforts around the foreclosure crisis.

For more information, contact Katt Hoban, ACCE, khoban@calorganize.org , 510-269-4692 ext. 509

Generation after generation, we have seen the destruction of communities of color in the United States through institutionalized discriminatory practices, lax enforcement of civil rights and consumer laws, and tacit approval and support of market driven policies. The ongoing displacement of millions of families and liquidation of generational wealth as a result of foreclosure fits squarely into this historical lineage.

It is now becoming apparent that the damage done by the foreclosure crisis does not cease with the individual loss of a home. The cumulative toll of displacement is reverberating through entire neighborhoods and cities with the dismantling of social networks and long-established community bonds. In this latest iteration of destruction, the built environment of houses, parks, and street corners may remain, but the human fabric has been disassembled.

I (Sharon) witnessed this first-hand as I visited my mom in Pacoima, California and saw neighbors–many of whom had lived in their homes for as long as 40 years– lose them to foreclosure. I was devastated to see their homes vacant and deteriorating. When I ran into one of the neighbors at the market nearby, he was embarrassed to see me and did not want to talk about why his family had moved. I learned from several other neighbors what had happened. They expressed to me that they feel the essence of the community is changing with the loss of so many long-time neighbors. It is as if these neighbors went missing in the middle of the night, disappearing from the church pews, the schools, and the neighborhood chats that often took place while out watering or mowing the lawn.

It has often been said that in crisis there is opportunity. So we might ask: what opportunities are being created in those communities like Pacoima and Oakland that have been ravaged due to foreclosure? If we take stock of the winners and losers in the current housing crisis, the balance sheet looks eerily familiar. While the crisis nearly brought down the entire economy, the financial institutions culpable for its origins have been miraculously revived. Meanwhile, many communities of color remain on life support, in critical condition.

The story continues to get worse. A recent study by the National Fair Housing Alliance revealed troubling disparities in the way financial institutions maintain their stocks of foreclosed properties. In particular, the study found that banks have provided better maintenance of their real estate owned (REO) properties in predominately white communities, compared to a prevalence of substandard conditions in communities of color.

As disadvantaged neighborhoods are allowed to fall into further disarray, the momentary housing devaluation has created the investment opportunity of a lifetime for real estate speculators. As financial institutions liquidate their backlogs of foreclosed properties, they have effectively fostered an environment that gives an overwhelming advantage to cash investors rather than first-time homebuyers or owner-occupants.

What might this mean for our communities? In Oakland, for instance, where 9 out of 10 investor purchases are in the city’s low-income communities, the investors have telegraphed their plans: “We want to bring in good, productive people and really change the area.”  While their profit motive is easily understood, the underlying thrust to dismantle the existing social fabric is horrific. In fact, the most tragic impact may be the trauma experienced by millions of school-aged children who have been uprooted from their homes and schools. The harm that is done to the psyches of folks that remain in—and have involuntarily left—these communities will last far longer than the coat of paint that is slapped on the investor-acquired house that was lost due to Wall Street greed and government indifference.

The evidence that history provides to us is clear: opportunity eludes those directly impacted by crisis.

The extraction of wealth from communities of color in the current crisis as a result of discriminatory bank policies, and continued by well-heeled investors is the same old song, but with a different beat.

We are left with burning questions about what the legacy of foreclosure and dispossession will mean over the long-term.  In well-established communities of color where predatory lending ran rampant and displacement continues, can we expect the demise or dilution of longstanding social and political institutions?  Will the erosion of neighborhoods as a result of foreclosure also weaken the power and standing of a community’s collective voice?  One thing is clear: the current “recovery” of the housing market does not include a recovery of the social fabric of neighborhoods.

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Steve King is the Housing and Economic Development Coordinator for Urban Strategies Council in Oakland, California. Sharon Kinlaw is the Interim Director of the Fair Housing Council of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California. 

Seventy-one percent of Asian-Americans and 77% of Latinos speak a language other than English at home.  Approximately 1 in 3 Asian Americans have difficulty communicating in English. With the growth of new immigrant families in the U.S., financial institutions have invested heavily in advertising and marketing to these communities in the hopes of acquiring a new customer base and the capital that many of these households can bring to their bottom lines.  One need only to observe bank branches for several major financial institutions in Oakland’s Chinatown, to see how successful financial institutions have been at marketing to many immigrant families regardless of their ability to communicate fully in English.

Banks have demonstrated the capacity to meet language needs when it comes to selling financial services, like originating new mortgages or opening bank accounts. The question however is once these new customers have difficulty making their mortgage payments, are the banks meeting their customers’ mortgage servicing needs?

In talking to housing counseling agencies throughout the country, we have observed time and again the disparate level of service given to limited English proficient homeowners that would allow them to fully access loan modifications and other payment changes that could prevent foreclosure. Mortgage notices are only provided in English.  Without mention of how limited English speaking homeowners can seek additional assistance, we fear too many homeowners are not informed fully of their options and needlessly end up in foreclosure.

Further, we hear reports from our counselors that servicers frequently circumvent housing counselors and contact limited English speaking homeowners directly to negotiate the terms of mortgage modifications. This is problematic when homeowners clearly have difficulty communicating in English which often leads to worse results for the homeowner.

Many servicers often cite their use of third-party verbal interpretation services intended to support language needs of borrowers.  However, the quality and consistency of the interpretation by this third party is uneven at best since there is no verification of the training or certification of these services to provide competent interpretation of mortgage and financial terminology. We have heard reports of borrowers being told one thing in English and something completely different in their native language through the interpreter.

What does all of this mean for homeowners with limited English proficiency? Simply put, these barriers make it harder for them to negotiate changes in their loan payments and access the relief that has become available through federal and state programs and settlement agreements in the last few years. Consider a case where an underwater homeowner receives a notice that reduces their principal by $50,000 but the homeowner has difficulty reading the notice. Without proper assistance and translation services, that homeowner could eventually land in foreclosure when it could have been avoided.

Last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released rules that create uniform mortgage servicing standards to protect consumers and hold servicers accountable. The rules offered much needed guidance to improve accuracy and accountability within mortgage servicing including how homeowners are notified of their mortgage status, how fees can be levied, and how homeowners are considered for foreclosure alternatives.

Unfortunately, the mortgage servicing rules did not explicitly identify translation of key mortgage servicing documents as a requirement for financial institutions. The rule also did not provide any guidance on verbal interpretation or communication with borrowers for whom English is not a first language. For many immigrant families, the lack of guidance on this issue is concerning to say the least.

We can do more to meet the needs of all impacted homeowners. The CFPB should issue rules that require the mortgage industry, and by extension the financial services sector, to provide proper translation of mortgage servicing notices that ensures equitable treatment for all homeowners in the foreclosure process. This should also include guidance on certification standards for third-party language interpreters regarding mortgage terminology in the same way that is required for the medical and legal fields. The housing counseling industry has decades of experience and employs many bilingual and bicultural trained housing counselors that can help inform systems and structures to support improved translation and interpretation of English terminology for financial services and mortgage servicing.

This issue of language access is not limited to mortgage servicing, but also applicable to notifying homeowners of loan modifications and principal reductions available through the National Mortgage Settlement and financial services more broadly.  As the new vanguard of consumer protections, the CFPB should set the foundation for language access to ensure greater economic justice for homeowners and communities of color in the future.

Jane Duong is Director of Programs and Advocacy for the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (CAPACD) headquartered in Washington, D.C. 

Neighborhoods of color are still reeling from the havoc wrought by the foreclosure crisis. The disproportionate number of high-cost subprime and option ARM loans in communities of color led to concentrated foreclosures and destabilization that have effectively re-redlined these communities.

Now, with limited relief available for some borrowers through federal programs and legal settlements, there is serious concern that this cycle of harm has taken a new turn. Last year’s $26 billion National Mortgage Settlement (NMS) was hailed as a significant step towards holding the largest banks accountable for the abusive servicing behavior that led to unnecessary foreclosures for countless homeowners. It has now been a year since the settlement was finalized, and the latest report released by its National Monitor Joe Smith shows that banks claim to have distributed $16.9 billion worth of consumer assistance in the state of California.

However, an important question plagues this initiative and others like it– who are the customers who were lucky enough to access this relief?

The settlement did not require banks to disclose demographic information about the borrowers or neighborhoods receiving assistance. The banks have refused to release this data, and Mr. Smith has so far declined to collect it. If the banks are truly serving all communities equally and they have nothing to hide, then why do they refuse to release this information?

Since the early days of the settlement negotiations, creating transparency and ensuring that the hardest hit communities were prioritized in the distribution of relief have been the rallying cries of advocates, civil rights groups, housing counselors, and community organizers. These groups know all too well how borrowers of color are unfairly treated and how difficult it has been for borrowers of color to access principal reduction loan modifications.

The failure of banks to translate key foreclosure relief documents has resulted in qualified borrowers unknowingly throwing away a chance to keep their homes, and making them vulnerable to loan modification scammers who will speak their native tongue. Last year’s legal settlements between the Department of Justice and Bank of America and Wells Fargo remind us that discriminatory lending practices are still alive and well. The DOJ alleged that Countrywide (purchased by Bank of America) and Wells Fargo both charged African American and Latino borrowers more when making home loans, and steered them into home loans that were more expensive than loans they offered to similarly situated white borrowers. Further, a recent General Accountability Office report looking at a similar relief program identified banks’ failure to conduct sufficient outreach to underserved communities as a major barrier to relief reaching all communities.

Preliminary findings from the California Reinvestment Coalition’s 2013 survey of 84 housing counselors suggest that certain borrowers and neighborhoods have disproportionately higher rates of foreclosure and less access to loan modifications. A majority of the counselors reported:

• A majority of their clients are borrowers of color.
• Families are not receiving adequate relief that allows them to stay in their homes.
• Banks are pressuring and incentivizing borrowers to do short sales instead of principal reduction modifications.
• Limited English Proficient borrowers have difficulty negotiating with their loan servicers in their native language.
• Widows, surviving children and similar borrowers who were not on the original loan are facing foreclosure because servicers refuse to speak to anyone but the original, now deceased, borrower.
• Dual track and other servicing abuses persist, though they are expressly prohibited by the NMS.

To ensure that the NMS’s anti-discrimination provisions and fair lending laws are honored, Mr. Smith should require the collection, analysis, and public reporting of data that show the race, ethnicity, gender and census tract of borrowers who are (and are not) getting assistance . He must aggressively police the agreement’s existing metrics – and impose new metrics and requirements as needed – to ensure that all consumers have equal access to loan modification relief and protection from the abusive servicing practices that are outlawed in the agreement.

These metrics and principles should go beyond this one settlement. Enforcement agencies and policymakers should make this standard for all future settlement agreements and programs that are distributing relief to consumers, ensuring that this relief is targeted to communities of color who were targeted for predatory lending and are now suffering from the highest rates of foreclosure. Barring access to this information leaves many questions unanswered and perpetuates the distrust of banks and the federal government that has spread through these communities.

If nothing is done to address these issues, it may be too late to stabilize and preserve the families and neighborhoods most impacted by predatory lending and the foreclosure crisis. Once the relief under the various settlements and programs has dried up, we may wake up to find that the intended beneficiaries have long since been displaced.

Kevin Stein and Kristina Bedrossian work for the California Reinvestment Coalition, an advocacy group that fights for fair and equal access to low income communities and communities of color in California. 

Bloomberg Businessweek recently published an issue titled “The Great American Housing Rebound.” Their cover art choice was a drawing of an American family, sitting in four separate rooms of a house, scooping, counting, and brandishing fistfuls of cash. There is a lamp, a cat, and a dog in the house, but otherwise, it’s mostly a rising tide of cash.

The attitude of the drawing is deeply scornful. Their image of us is grasping, greedy objects of ridicule. This is what the financial media evidently thinks of American families.

I’ll bet most Americans, when they think of home, don’t say, “What I like best is sitting by myself in a room, awash in cash, fanning myself with my money.”

“I like feeding my dog a bowl of money, while I listen to music.”

“I like swimming the breaststroke through my room of money, smiling like I just saw the ice cream truck.”

“I like brandishing my money at passers-by, with one eye popping out!”

If you looked at that picture and thought, “They’re not talking about me,” then think again.

“I worked hard to buy a modest house,” you say. “It didn’t even cost me $100,000.”

Rich people are not the targets of the subprime loan industry. The median higher-priced mortgage loan in 2011 was for $81,000, which means that half of the non-prime loans issued in 2011 ranged from $47,000 – 142,000.

If you make less, you pay more.

If you make more, you pay less.

Rich folks are considered less of a risk.

Really? Bernie Madoff? Not risky?

The London Whale? It seems to me like losing six billion dollars on “ill-fated trading” did more damage than a $47,000 home loan ever could.

The former chair and CEO of Citibank, Walter Wriston, once said, “Money goes where it is wanted and stays where it is well treated.”

Indeed.

A handful of folks are super rich, and their worldview of the rest of us is on full display in this cover.

If you say, “this isn’t me…we lost money on our house,” well, duh.

The cover’s implication that American families got rich from subprime shenanigans is perverse. The only people who truly made the fistfuls of cash depicted on the cover were largely hedge fund managers. The most recent estimate of household wealth losses due to the old mortgage industry is seven trillion dollars.  Yes, trillion, with a capital “T.”

If you say, “I didn’t cause the crisis — the guy shaking his fist full of money at me with his eye popping out, he caused the crisis; that kid feeding his dog a bowl full of money – he caused the crisis,” now we’re getting to something interesting: the stories we tell ourselves about the origin of the crisis. Some folks say their neighbors.

Other folks say financial engineering gone wrong.

I have an opinion on this, and it’s an exhaustive one.

But the Bloomberg Businessweek cover convinced me that the stories we tell ourselves is what’s important. Stories work.

This illustration says American families are greedy, selfish, isolated derelicts.  Is this the story that we want to tell ourselves — about ourselves, our country, and our values? This is what we aspire to tell the world? That average American families are the laughable, stupid (“what could go wrong?”) drivers of billion-dollar financial institutions’ behavior? That we are, in our isolation and greed, awful people?

This story does not say that we care about each other. This story does not say that our country is proud that we welcome people from around the world who want to build themselves and their families a better life.  It doesn’t say that we’ve tried for decades to fight hunger, violence, illiteracy, homelessness, addiction, isolation, and fear.  This story does not say that young people today still aspire to owning their own homes, and that they’re desperately trying to figure out to make that happen, given the student loan debt they’re in.  This story does not note that we are currently having essential conversations about new mortgage rules, child safety and well-being, and marriage equality. This story does not say that we care so much about each other that we donate and volunteer in truly staggering amounts.

Bloomberg Businessweek not only thought that their cover art told a credible story, but that it was necessary to encourage other business and financial leaders to echo this version of ourselves, this story of us.

That’s not a story I’m signing on to, and I hope you don’t either.

ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / DAILY NEWS STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Nicholas “Sixx” King donned a KKK costume last week to draw attention to the epidemic of black-on-black violence.

I’M SURPRISED that Nicholas “Sixx” King didn’t get his butt whupped last week when he walked through Center City in a Ku Klux Klan costume.

King did it to dramatize the fact that the No. 1 killer of black men in America isn’t a racist hate group such as the KKK. It’s other African-American men.

Let’s be honest. We’ve gotten used to the idea of young black males killing other young black males. In fact, we’re almost numb to it. When it happens, there’s a collective shoulder shrug. Life goes on. The murder rate continues climbing.

King, who is promoting his anti-violence documentary “Mothers of No Tomorrow” wants people to get worked up about this topic, and, seeing how that’s next to impossible, he went for shock value.

King, who’s pretty widely known around town, is never one to be shy about being seen, even in KKK robes and a cone-shaped hat. Still, this latest publicity stunt topped everything he’s ever done, including crashing both the Grammys and the MTV Video Music Awards.

“The Ku Klux Klan is no longer the primary killer of African-Americans. It’s been outsourced to a subculture of young black men,” King said afterward. “There’s . . . a lot of mitigating factors of why it’s happening. But definitely, the number one is self-hate.”

Yo, but walking through Center City in a KKK robe?

“A lot of people, when they saw me in the costume, they didn’t know if I was black or white because they couldn’t see under the costume. They had an instant disdainment for the costume, for the robe,” he recalled. “For me, I say, ‘If you have that disdainment for a wardrobe, it should be extended to a subculture of people who are perpetrating that ideology on a day-to-day basis in the community. I want African-Americans, liberals, to have that same disdainment when we hear about a senseless murder.’ ”

Don’t we? I asked.

“We, as black people, we don’t do it,” asserted King, whose previous projects include a relationship book and a stint blogging for Essence magazine.

Hard to argue with that, when you consider Philly’s no-snitch culture and the problems that law enforcement has trying to get witnesses to cooperate. President Obama addressed the issue of gun control during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, but it’s high time for black folks to get proactive on the issue ourselves.

“This is a problem that only we can solve internally,” says Chuck Williams, an associate professor at Drexel University and director of the Center for the Prevention of School-Aged Violence. “While it was not created by us, we are the only ones that can resolve it.

“It’s almost like having someone else come in and tell you how to raise your kids,” Williams added. “It shouldn’t be the job of the government. That’s the mother’s and father’s jobs, the neighborhood’s and the community’s.”

As he talked, I couldn’t help but remember how, in 2007, the then- police commissioner issued a call for 10,000 black men to help patrol the streets of Philadelphia. That movement largely went nowhere.

Last fall, community activist Bilal Qayyum organized a black-violence conference at the Pennsylvania Convention Center attended by anti-violence experts from around the country. He plans to share their recommendations with 70 community activists. His goal: to create a national movement to prevent black-on-black violence.

“What Sixx did last week, I thought it was pretty creative,” said Qayyum, who’s also president of the Father’s Day Rally Committee. “I know the point he was trying to make.

“Externally, we have to challenge the American system and the American image of black males,” he said. “Internally, we have to challenge ourselves about our negative behavior, which leads to America’s image of black males. To me, that’s the struggle now.”

And if it takes dressing up in a KKK costume to shock people into paying attention to the issue of black-on-black violence, then so be it.