Tegucigalpa and Mexico City

It was a little more complicated than that from what I could tell.  The bank  had been swept up in a public/private takeover which was going to require ACORN International to do a fair amount of research and figure out, but especially since the golpe de estadio, it was no longer a worker and poor family friendly institution.  Even with the political  turmoil which only exacerbated the worldwide Great Recession, the bank had now become unwilling to meet and was maintaining interest rates that were way out of whack in these times.

What about the unions?  Had they moved their money out of the bank and stopped endorsing the bank once the private interests took over?  The answer according to the organizers seemed to be “No.”  How could  they not be ashamed of what was being done with their money now?  They would be according to the people I talked to but no one had looked hard enough at their practices yet.

This might be some leverage in moving forward to improve living conditions in the colonias with an active campaign and care to avoid the political repression that seemed to weigh so heavily on every sentence and each part of every conversation.  Yes, the organizers were saying, it could be done, si se puede, but we would have to be very, very careful.  People could be killed.

This is not the normal nature of an organizing and campaign conversation obviously!

Walking around the colonias, the huge towers for TIGO, the telecommunications giant were everywhere in the middle of the barrio?  What were they doing?

Looking at the waste water runoff, I found myself looking down the mountain at a runway of the international airport.  I talked to the organizers about a giant banner that we could put up and take down and spread around to sent our message clearly and carefully:  Beinvenidos Turistas!  You are drinking our shit!  In Spanish of course, but powerfully making the point that without potable water or any sewerage facility, the runoff from the colonias was going right down to the airport grounds.

Even with the government paralyzed, the Banco de Los Trabajadores could put up the loans for housing improvements needed in the colonias and TIGO and the Airport, managed by the Swiss incidentally, could guarantee them.

It would take careful planning, lots of work, and great care, but there were many ways to skin this cat!  And, that’s what community organizing is all about!

New Orleans

In recent years sitting across the table from banks and sub-prime lending companies, we had this argument frequently over what was called “stated income” loans (I cover this at more length in my book, Citizen Wealth). Stated income allowed the potential borrower to prove their income in a variety of ways that substituted for the simple and standard W2 that a direct employee could provide.  This allowed tipped employees as well as self-employed workers to prove their incomes without W2’s.  The fact that many of the companies did virtually nothing to supervise the broker networks “manufacturing” of stated income loans was the problem (New Century had half of its portfolio in stated income loans right before the collapse!), not the existence of the loan itself.

The casualization of the workforce has increased the number of workers in self-employed categories along with the arcane definitions in labor law.  Not only do these self-employed categories include fancy jobs (though not necessarily high paying) as artists, musicians, consultants, and investors, but also straight forward jobs like taxi drivers, construction workers, many healthcare workers, some hospitality workers, and a pile of others.

Of the more than 20.4 self-employed workers (and even with the most modest family calculations we could double or triple the impact here), some already own homes, but for those attempting to access the assets to create citizen wealth, this arbitrary credit refusal is unjust, inequitable, and bad public policy.

Fannie Mae seems to be part of the problem here.  David Streitfield’s article includes this:

A Fannie spokesman, Brian Faith, said tighter regulations screened out those unprepared to be owners.

“One of the important lessons learned in the past few years is that it is not enough to help a borrower own a home,” Mr. Faith said. “We must also help ensure that they will be able to stay in the home over the long term.”

If there is a prize for gratuitous and meaningless statements for the day, then here’s to Brian Faith!  Not only were these NOT the lessons learned in the “past few years,” but even arguably if they were, Fannie and the rest of the gang are doing NOTHING to “help ensure” folks who want to own and are qualified to somehow achieve sustainability and security “over the long term.”  Please send me a copy of THAT program and its non-existent guidelines?

In the meantime, as I often say, “there’s no substitute for good judgment,” and that’s supposedly what these folks collect fees and interest to exercise.  Get at it!