Foreclosures are not Sparing Ailing Elders

Foreclosures are not sparing ailing elders like Ella Kleen a long time resident of Santa Cruz. Her son Carl is busy packing as they have few more days before being evicted from their tainted house. What they will do after leaving remains a big question mark.

For the Keens recently life has been a series of bumps ever since the taking of a risky loan that soon started demanding high interest rates. Then clerical errors cropped up. Medical bills added to their woes.

Carl moved in to live with his mother since this octogenarian was diagnosed to be suffering from dementia from 2005. Following this she suffered a stroke. Last November her house endured a foreclosure sale without her being previously informed.

Carl Keen bemoaned that his mother had poured $200,000 on the house but now she was walking away with her hands empty. She does not even have a second place to go to. This has greatly stressed her out. Ella Keen used most of her savings in 1995 to make a down payment on her three bed roomed house in Trevethan Avenue in Santa Cruz. She refinanced in 2006 with IndyMac. Later IndyMac came to be seized by FDIC in 2008. In the history of USA this was the fourth largest bank to fail.

Carl’s suspicions were aroused when he first came to hear of the loans. He said, “They didn’t ask for any proof of income. I was blown away. Here she is, this woman pushing 80, who has dementia. They should not have written her a loan. She ended up having to pay $7,500 a month. That was a surprise, because they said the loan was adjustable.”

Ella Keen is the recipient of a Social Security check of $900 that provides her with the basics for survival. Carl Keen had been a salesman for the last two decades but since the previous two years he has not been consistently employed. Pushed into a corner they contacted a lawyer who advised them to file for bankruptcy as this would have given them some time to think. But due to a clerical error the papers were not filed and the house got sold at an auction.

Carl is planning to take his mother to Stockton where she would stay with her daughter for the time being. Meanwhile he would continue his search for a job so that he could again set up a home with his old mother. He said, “I can stay with a friend for a little while, until I get on my feet. But my mother doesn’t have anything. The banks are out for themselves. We were completely taken advantage of.”

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