Housing

SWOP’s Housing Team led statewide in an important victory on predatory lending. Predatory lending has resulted in hundreds of foreclosures, abandoned buildings, and illegal conversions on the Southwest Side. After nearly two years of hard work—local house adoptions, meetings with the Governor and key legislators, many delegations sent to Springfield, collecting 10,000 signed postcards, marches in front of bad lenders in the community, assemblies of hundreds of people—Illinois passed strong anti-predatory lending regulations, despite heavy opposition from the banking industry lobby.

Building on these gains to monitor, regulate and eliminate predatory lending, in 2005 SWOP won the passage of HB 4050, an unprecedented anti-foreclosure legislation that provided transparency in the mortgage lending industry and pre-closing counseling for buyers who qualify only for high interest, sub-prime loans. The data we collected and the strategies we implemented are now informing state-wide policies as mortgage foreclosure has become a national economic issue.