July 12, 2024

An accident turned this homeowner into a tenant; he’s got one last chance to keep his house

BY Namu SampathMassLive

Editor’s note: This story is part of an occasional series, “Faces of the Housing Crisis.” Are you experiencing housing issues or have a housing-related problem you want us to investigate? Email suggestions to nsampath@repub.com and gjochem@repub.com.

SPRINGFIELD — On a hot summer day in June, Jocephus Grant sat on the porch of a house on Jasper Street. It’s the place he raised two daughters and has called home for 15 years.

But for eight of those years, Grant has been fighting to stay. An injury he suffered while working as a long-distance trucker resulted in a foreclosure. An investor purchased his home at auction.

Today, Grant is fighting his family’s eviction.

He is anxiously awaiting a decision on an appeal he filed with the Massachusetts Appellate Court. The decision will likely be the final word on Grant’s case — and determine whether Grant and his two daughters, now both adults, will be able to continue living on Jasper Street.

“I have nowhere else to go,” Grant said. “If I can’t keep up with my bills, we might end up homeless.”

Grant’s plight isn’t unusual. A 2008 Boston University study in four U.S. states found that about half of all foreclosures were caused in part by a medical problem. Some who answered the survey said their foreclosure followed an illness or an injury, unmanageable medical bills, lost work due to a medical problem, or being a caretaker for an sick family member.

This is a growing problem in the U.S.: 100 million Americans face some form of medical care debt and about 1 in 5 said those debts forced them to change their living situation, according to a 2022 poll from KFF, a national health policy research organization.

A proposal from the Biden-Harris administration could reverse the damage that unpaid medical bills have on credit scores. In the past, medical debt has blocked people from being able to take out a mortgage or rent an apartment. On June 11, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said a rule change would prevent almost any medical debt from appearing on credit reports.

After losing a trial two years ago, Grant now clings to his house as a tenant, paying monthly fees to its new owners. His experience moved him to become an advocate for others going through the same struggle.

An accident has life-altering damages

Grant bought 182 Jasper St., a white colonial-style home with a front yard and driveway, in 2009 for $171,000, according to the Hampden County Registry of Deeds, using an FHA-insured loan he received from his mortgage lender.

After being a renter for years, Grant was proud to be a homeowner. “We thought we’d have so many years of happy memories to make in this house,” he said.

In 2014, Grant suffered a major injury while working as a truck drive for New England Motor Freight.

Nightly, Grant would make trips from Springfield to Philadelphia. On one of those trips, Grant hit bad weather while coming home.

“I got on the highway in New Haven and could feel the rough roads,” he said. “The truck jackknifed.”

The injuries were life-altering and cost him nearly everything: his wife, his job, and eventually ownership of his house.

Grant said he still struggles with lower back pain, sacroiliac (SI) dysfunction and knee pain.

“All of these injuries make it hard to walk and get around,” he said.

Through the years, he also suffered health problems unrelated to the accident, including a heart condition that has sent him to the hospital multiple times.

For six months after his injury, Grant received workers’ compensation insurance, but he said his pay “drastically” decreased, dropping 66% in six months. Then, because he was unable to drive long distances, he lost his job.

Around the same time, his wife moved out. To financially stay afloat, Grant applied for disability insurance.

“I was rejected the first time,” he said. “I was only approved in 2019, and I’m leaning on my disability insurance now.”

Grant fell behind on his monthly payments to Mid-Island Mortgage Corp., a New York mortgage lender with a location in Woburn. Then he defaulted.

In October 2016, Cenlar — the company Mid-Island Mortgage Corp. uses to handle its loans — foreclosed on the Grant family, according to property records.

Foreclosure leads to an auction

Massachusetts allows what’s known as a non-judicial foreclosure. That means a mortgage holder does not need a judge’s oversight to foreclose on a home.

“This makes it quicker and easier for banks to foreclose on homeowners,” said Gregory K. McDonald, an assistant professor of law at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who specializes in bankruptcies and foreclosures.

“You never foresee something like an accident happening,” Grant said of his situation. “You think you’re going to be able to take care of it, but I’m in a financial bind.”

For those unfamiliar with housing court, the foreclosure and eviction process can be confusing, disheartening and frustrating. Fighting his eviction, Grant said, has been one of the toughest things he has ever done. “This case is on my mind every day but it’s hard to talk about,” he said.

His appeal is based on a belief that his mortgage lender didn’t follow the rules.

According to federal regulations for FHA-insured loans, a mortgage lender must set up a face-to-face meeting with the person who took out the mortgage prior to bringing a foreclosure case.

Throughout his lengthy court case, a two-day trial in 2022 and now his appeal, Grant has maintained that Mid-Island Mortgage Corp. did not properly set up a face-to-face meeting with him, according to his appeal brief.

Grant’s appeal states that for five years before the jury trial, Mid-Island Mortgage admitted to sending the letter via first-class mail, not certified mail, as is federally required.

“They acted like they were trying to help, but it never happened,” Grant told a reporter, while sitting on his porch. “We never had that meeting.”

Grant’s appeal brief goes on to say that during his trial, his mortgage lender told the jury that “the letter was sent certified with no demonstrative proof.”

According to McDonald, the law professor at UMass Dartmouth, while it is considered illegal for a mortgage lender to not set up an in-person meeting, “it is not necessarily a problem that would end a foreclosure case.”

Mid-Island Mortgage disputes Grant’s assertions. In its appeal brief, the company says its mortgage servicer, Cenlar, sent a letter to Grant via certified mail offering a face-to-face interview, which is allowed in the federal regulations.

Mid-Island Mortgage said it did not receive a response from Grant. The company says an agent visited the Jasper Street house, knocked and then affixed a copy of the letter to Grant’s front door, after no one answered.

In May 2016, Mid-Island Mortgage said it notified Grant that the house would be put up for sale after foreclosure. Grant, they said, signed a letter acknowledging the sale.

Foreclosure petitions are common in Springfield, data shows

In November 2016, Grant received a 72-hour Notice to Quit letter from Mid-Island Mortgage, according to court documents.

This notice was just the start of Grant’s legal struggle in Springfield’s housing court. Unlike in criminal court, defendants are not guaranteed access to counsel.

A bill going through the Legislature could change that. Housing advocates are pushing lawmakers to improve how tenants are treated during the judicial process.

The bill’s guidelines include ways homelessness can be prevented, including providing education and outreach to tenants about housing court, increased collaboration among local advocacy groups and access to the right legal assistance.

In Grant’s case, he represented himself for the most part, though he was occasionally advised by attorneys from Community Legal Aid, according to the court dockets.

“I had no previous knowledge of how to (represent myself),” he said. “I’ve seen court shows on TV, but other than that, I had to learn hose to fight for myself and my family.”

On Aug. 2, 2018, Mid-Island Mortgage sold Grant’s home in an auction to new owners, listed as Vitaly Gladysh, a real estate agent in North Carolina, and Vladimir Strela, owner of Strela Builders Corporation in Agawam, for $117,500, according to the Hampden County Registry of Deeds.

“Why couldn’t they offer me that amount so I could stay here with my family?” Grant asked.

Gladysh’s attorney, Priscilla Chesky, wrote on his behalf in an appellate brief that Gladysh is supportive of the jury’s verdict in the trial. Chesky argues in court documents that the deed of the Jasper Street house was properly transferred to Gladysh and Strela in 2018, making them the rightful owners.

Between last September and this February, there were 5.01 foreclosure petitions per 1,000 owners in Springfield, according to the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, a public nonprofit that works with the governor and state housing office.

“Post-foreclosure evictions are very common in Springfield,” said Rose Webster-Smith, director of Springfield No One Leaves. “We see them all the time.”

Springfield’s foreclosure petition rate was much higher than comparable cities like Boston and Worcester. Each of those communities had a rate of less than two foreclosure petitions per 1,000 homeowners, according to the data.

“Springfield’s foreclosure petition rate is higher than those other cities, but it’s still pretty low compared to prior to the pandemic,” said Tom Hopper, director of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership’s Center for Data. “While every potential foreclosure is cause for concern, we are not currently seeing a widespread crisis in terms of foreclosure activity.”

Springfield and Hampden County saw among the highest rates of foreclosure and eviction compared to other parts of the state.

Hopper said this may be because Hampden County sees a high demand for housing, but its residents face increased economic hardships.

The Homeowner Assistance Fund — a state program funded by the American Rescue Plan Act that stopped accepting new applications last June — provided mortgage assistance for homeowners who were impacted by the pandemic, he said.

“Springfield was the number one community for (Homeowner Assistance Fund) applications,” Hopper said.

In the absence of that funding, the Massachusetts Housing Partnership’s latest report said there will be an increase in foreclosure petitions in cities that relied on this funding to prevent such actions.

Grant loses his jury trial and appeals case

Shortly after his house was sold to Gladysh in 2018, Grant’s eviction process started.

Mid-Island Mortgage requested a jury trial in 2019. Due to the pandemic, it was pushed off until 2022.

A jury came to a verdict about Grant’s case after a two-day trial. They sided with Mid-Island Mortgage.

A judge ruled that Gladysh and Strela, the new owners, would receive full possession of the white house on Jasper Street.

“Housing attorneys don’t usually go through a jury trial, much less regular citizens,” said Webster-Smith of Springfield No One Leaves.

Grant said losing the trial was brutal.

“They said the jury was made up of my peers, but they weren’t like me,” he said. “A lot of them were homeowners who had never gone through a process like this one, especially representing themselves.”

Grant is now a board member at Springfield No One Leaves. “I teach leadership, organizational skills, and I advise people about the laws and to watch out for your community,” he said. “Homeowners have rights. It’s important that people know that.”

Grant admits that many times in the last eight years, he wanted to give up fighting for his house.

“Sometimes all you can do is break down,” he said. “But I went up there to plead for my house, for my life and my kids.”

Following the trial, the new owners requested, in 2022, that Grant pay $2,000 a month in use-and-occupancy fees — rent, essentially —while he and his family continued to live in the house.

Due to financial hardship, Grant requested the fee be reduced to $900 per month, which he was granted, according to court documents.

“If I win (my appeal), I would get that money back, which would help me pay the rest of my mortgage,” he said.

A week after the jury verdict, Grant filed an appeal with the Massachusetts Appellate Court. It is not known when a decision will be rendered. “This whole process has been so tough,” he said.

When Grant filed his appeal in 2022, he was still acting as his own attorney. It wasn’t until May that Christa Douaihy, a Community Legal Aid attorney, appeared in the appellate court for Grant.

Douaihy represented Grant in her limited representation capacity a few times during his original court case, according to the Western Housing Court dockets. She did not return a request for comment about the appeal.

Grant said he never imagined an accident at work would lead to so many years of legal action. Through it all, he said his family has been his biggest support.

“I’ve been trying everything to win back my house,” he said. “I’ve been navigating a court system that was never meant for me to navigate.”