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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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The pictures are worth not only the proverbial thousand words, but hundreds of thousands of dollars as well. The "before" photo shows a neatly maintained four-family house in New Haven. In the "after" shot stands a shell of the same building: door and windows boarded, siding stripped off, even the iron porch rail gone. Around the time of the before photo, when a bank foreclosed on the house, it was appraised at $160,000. Sixteen months later -- and, crucially, after the lender evicted all four tenants -- the vandalized property sold for just $16,000. And when a house plunges from stable to blighted, it drags the whole block down with it. Property values fall, homeowners move out, absentee investors walk away from their now-worthless properties. That fate befalls many foreclosed properties in New Haven, where renters make up 70 percent of the city and where, like elsewhere in the country, lenders routinely evict even paid-up tenants when they foreclose on the landlord. It's one knot in New Haven's foreclosure tangle -- which a Yale Law School clinic, teaming up with local nonprofit agencies, is trying to unsnarl. The clinic is part of a remarkable collaborative called the ROOF Project (Real Options, Overcoming Foreclosure). More than just a way to keep a roof over people's heads, ROOF is mapping a comprehensive strategy that aims at preventing foreclosures; protecting tenants caught between landlords and lenders; and putting foreclosed properties into the hands of responsible homeowners, rather than letting them sit abandoned and rotting. ROOF is housed at a local nonprofit, the Greater New Haven Community Loan Fund. But Robin Golden '79, '98JD, and her students in the law school's community and economic development clinic play a central role. From organizing outreach sessions for at-risk homeowners to researching best practices, from dissecting complex financial deals to testifying before the Connecticut legislature, the students are helping to design and implement a proactive, constantly evolving approach. "We have a stock of nimble, brilliant students who can be deployed" as needed, says Sameera Fazili '06JD, a Law School fellow and clinical lecturer who worked side by side with Golden. "We can help with strategy, but we can also help with implementation." The clinic pulls in student volunteers not only from the Law School but from the School of Management, the environment school, and even the Divinity School. One former clinical student -- Eva Heintzelman '98, '08MBA -- hired on as ROOF's paid staff person after graduating from SOM last year. Yale students helped design an outreach program for at-risk homeowners but then realized that community organizing is not "our core competency," says law student Mirra Levitt '10. So while local agencies tackle outreach and counseling, students focus on a third priority, neighborhood stabilization, using the legal and policy research skills that do lie at the heart of a Yale law education. Being students allows them to respond quickly to emerging needs -- for example, the problem of the evicted renters. Local legal aid lawyers Amy Marx '00JD and Amy Eppler-Epstein '86JD represent some of those tenants at New Haven Legal Assistance Association. Last year, they persuaded Fannie Mae to stop evicting paid-up renters from foreclosed homes. They wanted to bring the same pressure to bear on other lenders. At first they considered filing suits. But the "hugely complicated contractual relationships" among mortgage lenders, trustees, and servicers made it virtually impossible to find a responsible party to sue or even to talk to, says Ben Rogers '09JD, who became what Fazili calls the clinic's "resident expert" at untangling those relationships. "By pairing together" with the legal aid lawyers, "we could gang up on" the lenders through suasion, not litigation, Fazili says. Students researched and drafted a letter to roughly a dozen banks responsible for most of the foreclosures in New Haven. Punctuated by those before-and-after photos, the letter asked the lenders to stop automatically evicting paid-up tenants from foreclosed properties. The mailing led to a City Hall meeting this spring and promises by the banks to review their policies. ROOF's next major step is figuring how to target New Haven's $3.2 million share of the new federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program. The money will go toward buying foreclosed houses and matching them with qualified first-time buyers. If done right, the program will be a win-win: helping people of modest means become homeowners, while bringing stability to fragile neighborhoods. If done wrong, however, the program could be a waste of money. With their community partners, Heintzelman and the law clinic are devising criteria to determine which properties will produce the biggest bang for the buck. "At every stage of this process, we've been ahead of the game," says clinical student Matthew Kopac '09MBA. "We are prepared to act [while] other cities catch up." Still, asked about the project's success, Levitt injects a sober note. "It would be glib and hubristic to measure our success in the community right now," she says. "The history of intervention in New Haven should also give us pause." |
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