More Maryland renters caught amid foreclosure, By Jamie Smith Hopkins, December 30, 2009, Baltimore Sun: “Marjorie Benedum and her husband, Mel Harris, knew their landlord was facing foreclosure but were reassured when he said they could keep renting the Southwest Baltimore house after his family lost it. Then Harris, who is 79 and retired, came home from church three weeks ago to find a sheriff’s notice on the door. Get out in 10 days, it said, or be evicted. ‘We weren’t sure what we were going to do,’ recalled Benedum, 62. More and more renters have been caught up in the national foreclosure crisis, and lenders taking back those homes nearly always want them gone. That has proved tremendously disruptive for the tenants, despite state and federal laws enacted in May to try to ease the pain. Maryland law requires that lenders notify renters before foreclosing on landlords, but – as was the case for Benedum and Harris – the letters do not always get into the right hands…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty