In Southland, foreclosure crisis ‘doesn’t discriminate’

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Every two weeks, Susan Leahy gets a thick sheaf of papers with the names and addresses of dozens of people whose homes are being foreclosed.

The one-time hair stylist and daughter of a former Chicago police officer, Leahy will knock on every door on that list, trying to point people to help as they fight to save their homes.

Behind those doors, she’s met children who are watching after even-younger siblings while mom is at work. There was the woman who had been living without electricity and heat for months. When the weather got cold, Leahy said, she would make the local library her refuge.

A single mother of three from Orland Park, Leahy isn’t necessarily an altruistic do-gooder, trying to single-handedly right the wrongs in one of the worst housing markets in memory.

She signed on about eight months ago as a field foreclosure coordinator with Action Now, one of several organizations Cook County is working with to spread the word about free help available to people at risk of losing their homes.

“I had just sent my resume in, even though I didn’t have any experience in foreclosures,” Leahy said.

Basically, she needed a job.

Leahy, who grew up in Chicago’s Beverly community, is a licensed cosmetologist and for several years worked for the Cook County Forest Preserve District, supervising cashiers at county golf courses.

Privatization took away that job, and in 2004 she got her master’s degree in criminal justice from Governors State University. Leahy said she saw herself “working as some type of probation officer,” but a job never materialized.

She now finds herself spending about 10 hours a day talking to Southland homeowners in towns hardest hit by foreclosures — handing out fliers with phone numbers of housing counselors and realizing just how widespread the problem is.

“It doesn’t discriminate,” she said of housing foreclosure. “I’ve seen them all over (the area). We have a vacant house in our neighborhood.”

Until a week ago, Leahy had a helper while making her rounds, Beverly resident Rolanda Williams. Her salary was paid for through the state’s Put Illinois to Work program, the funding for which recently ended.

“We need more hands,” said Leahy, who would ultimately like to work as a housing counselor.

‘I lost the house’

Lois Martin describes her home in Orland Park’s Fairway Estates subdivision as though she’s a real estate agent.

“The view is just perfect,” the 82-year-old retired schoolteacher says of a nearby park and pond. “There couldn’t be a better place.”

But unless she can find a buyer, the home will end up in the hands of the mortgage company.

After the death of her husband a year ago, Martin’s income was cut in half, and her teacher pension wasn’t enough to cover the $1,000 monthly note on her mortgage. She stopped paying the bank in September and in November got papers warning that she was close to defaulting on the loan.

Recently, another letter arrived, informing her that foreclosure proceedings will be initiated.

“I lost the house,” she said wearily.

“You haven’t lost it yet,” said Leahy, who hopes she can get Martin in to see a housing counselor.

The county can’t offer Martin help, however, until the foreclosure lawsuit has been filed in court.

Martin has several family members offering her a place to stay should she lose her house, and for now she’s staying with a granddaughter in Crete.

“I guess I’m one of the lucky ones,” she acknowledges. “I’ve got family to stay with.”

Sisters are calling her

Glenda Evans said she sometimes feels as though she’s ready “to just pack it up.”

In December, she got a notice that her lender, Wells Fargo, was foreclosing on her Park Forest home. Since then, three of her sisters who’ve retired and moved to Florida are imploring her to simply walk away and come live with one of them.

“They say, ‘Just let it go and come here,’” Evans said. “I don’t want to give it (the house) up.”

A few years ago, she had hoped to follow in the footsteps of her sister who sold her Chicago home for triple what she paid and was able to retire. For Evans, however, the money was never there to make all the improvements she wanted to, and then the housing market tanked.

Evans, 56, once had a good-paying job, working in online banking for financial giant J.P. Morgan Chase. When her position was transferred to Springfield, Mo., she took another job in data entry — and a $14,000-a-year pay cut — at the bank. She lost that job in September 2009.

Despite having what she considers “really great” computer skills, no good jobs have come her way.

“They (prospective employers) look at you as if that’s (data entry) all you know,” Evans said.

Her unemployment benefits weren’t enough to cover her monthly mortgage of more than $900. Wells Fargo initially agreed to modify her loan, dropping her monthly payment to about $300. A couple months later, however, she was told it would be about $500.

Leahy said the county’s mediation program might be able to help Evans and her bank come to terms.

In the meantime, though, Evans’ three grown children are urging her to heed her sisters’ advice.

“They want me to go because they see what’s happening to me,” she said.