In a recent interview, Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur told Americans: 'Be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave.'
I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave."
She criticizes the bailout's failure to protect homeowners facing foreclosure. Her advice to "squat" cleverly exploits a legal technicality within the subprime-mortgage crisis. These mortgages were made, then bundled into securities and sold and resold repeatedly, by the very Wall Street banks that are now benefiting from TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program). The banks foreclosing on families very often can't locate the actual loan note that binds the homeowner to the bad loan. "Produce the note," Kaptur recommends those facing foreclosure demands of the banks.
"[P]ossession is nine-tenths of the law," Rep. Kaptur told me. "Therefore, stay in your property.
"If it's a sheriff's eviction, if it's reached that point, that is almost impossible."