First campaign commercial- addressing the foreclosure crisis: Esrati: My Neighborhood

No matter where you live in OH-10, you have had it happen. A neighbor loses their job (GM, NCR, Iams, the list goes on) or a family member gets a terminal disease, or gas prices go up to $4 a gallon and begin the slow process toward foreclosure.

The banks refuse to renegotiate the loan, lower interest rates or even rent the house back to the former “owners”- they file paperwork (sometimes with a robo-signer) and ask the government to do their collections (I can’t get the sheriff to collect for me).

The homes in nicer neighborhoods (like Mike Turner’s gated community) are carefully maintained and secured. Ones in my neighborhood- are vacated and left in limbo as the looters or the speculators do their thing and the house loses value faster than my kids eat ice cream.

Because we’ve allowed loans to be sold off and traded like commodities- our communities are at the mercy of the Wall Street Casino. My loan has been sold off more times than I care to count: US Bank to GreenPoint to CountryWide to Bank of America to IBM to SETERUS where they now are trying to claim that I owe them for insurance that they bought on their own without checking with me at a rate of at least 3x what my policy cost.

Foreclosure affects us if we want to sell our homes- dropping the comps that are “necessary” for the banks to lend. They have also made it a great opportunity for real estate speculators who buy and flip homes- often without doing any improvements thanks to inside connections to the banks and access to capital.

It’s time to change the discussion of who is to blame for the mess- to what are we going to do about it. The banks haven’t done a fraction of the refinances that they were told to do by Congress through the “Making Home Affordable” program. Often times after the banks kick the people out- they turn them over to a subsidiary and write off the loan, hoping to show a profit when the subsidiary flips it. It’s time to stop the madness.

Here’s my first campaign spot: Foreclosure

Once people leave, entropy sets in and the value begins to drop. Let’s make the banks think twice before they uproot our neighbors, forcing them to either rent back the property- or maintain it in the same condition as when they kicked the people out.

That way, the bank shares the pain with you, instead of foisting the burden off on you.

If you like this video- and want to see a voice in Congress that isn’t being subsidized by the banking industry, please consider donating to my campaign using the widget on the right or going to and making a donation.

I want to be the candidate of the Democratic party to take on Mike Turner in OH-10. I believe my skills, both as a special operations soldier, a small business owner, a blogger and community activist and last but not least, an advertising pro, can make me the best choice to face the incredible money-raising skills of our current corporately owned congressman,
