Fending Off Foreclosure.

• Author: Gray, Kevin Alexander
• Position: Home ownership in the United States - Essay

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I grew up with the idea that owning your own home was important. That there should always be a place your kids could come back to. That you should have something to pass down to them. I wasn't raised with the notion of a home as a cash register or something to "flip."

Nevertheless, eight years ago, my wife and I contacted our mortgage company for a home improvement loan to fix the roof, the heating, and the plumbing. Something went wrong from the start. The bank informed us that we didn't have enough equity in the house. I knew that was impossible. We had ten years of relatively on-time payments, and the house had doubled in value. We'd bought our $52,000 three-bedroom home with a $7,000 down payment that we had borrowed from a black-owned bank with the help of a co-signer.

Our home isn't fancy, but it's in a good, predominantly black neighborhood in the heart of Columbia, South Carolina. When we purchased the house, I thought it was best not to be listed on the paperwork, fearing my politics might jeopardize our chances.

Like lots of mortgagees, our lien changed hands over the years. We started out with a local lender that sold our loan to another company that sold it to another company. I challenged the lender's claim that we had no equity. We suspected the bank thought it was dealing with a "single black woman." Other black women were having similar problems with their mortgage companies when they sought refinancing. When I called, the person on the phone said they didn't have to even talk to me since my name wasn't on the loan.

So I said, "So you're going to treat me like a nigger?"

And they hung up on me.

We decided to take the bank to court since it was denying that we had equity. Ultimately, we lost over a technicality, and we never got our refinancing loan.

I grant you our case was atypical. But the bank was unreasonable, and it offered us refinancing only at the point when we were about to pay off the house, which we managed to do this year, with the help of our friends. The bank wanted us to remain in debt to it, rather than for us to own our home free and clear.

A relative of mine bought a house with a subprime loan in 2007. It was a three-bedroom home a little smaller than ours on less than an acre. The house cost around $150,000. The lender offered her one of those no-money-down deals, with payments set at $1,500 a month. At the time, she could barely afford the payments. But when she lost her job, ironically at an insurance company, she went months before she found another one. She fell behind in her payments, and she ultimately lost her home and her credit rating. Now she lives in an...