Dear Congressman Miller:

Thank you very much for introducing the Preserving Homes and Communities Act of 2011. This is a vital piece of legislation that California (and the country) desperately needs.

There is one urgent issue that the bill does not cover. In the last several months I have read articles regarding people who have had their lives ruined: their houses broken into, their property thrown onto the street, their homes vandalized and padlocked... because the bank foreclosed on the wrong house.

This has happened because of errors made at banks (where they filled out the foreclosure paperwork incorrectly) or because of errors made by the bank's agents on the street (i.e. "cleaning out" the house NEXT DOOR to the one that had been foreclosed.)

Families so wronged often have little to no recourse. Their possessions are gone; if the agents left them on the street, they were looted by passers-by and there is no hope of recovery. They cannot afford to repair the damage done by the bank's agents. For instance, I've heard of one house wrongly foreclosed where the agents broke in when no one was home and poured anti-freeze down the kitchen sink. This is especially cruel and unjust if the house so vandalized was never served any foreclosure paperwork, or the house actually foreclosed was the one next door. The family's only recourse then is to sue a powerful bank -- a David-and-Goliath task for the working poor.

Congressman, the way to solve this problem is to establish criminal penalties for these foreclosures-gone-wrong. A bank employee who initiates foreclosure proceedings on the wrong home -- or a bank agent who vandalizes and padlocks the wrong house -- must serve jail time. Right now, a victimized family can call the police, but there's little the police can do. This must change. The police must be empowered to arrest the individuals whose negligence ruins lives, and the district attorney must prosecute them like any other criminal.

Thank you very much! I hope to see Congress take action to outlaw this kind of injustice.

Sincerely,

C. Colvin