“The day they came for Addie Polk’s house” is the title of a New Yorker article this week that puts Akron in the spotlight of today’s tough economic times of home foreclosures.
By the end of June, 2.4 million homes were in foreclosre or prolonged delinquency and Addie Polk and Akron are a postcard for those unfortunate home losers.
The article by Peter J. Boyer is in the November 24 issued of the New Yorker.
Here are a few graphs from his story:
In the early afternoon on October 1st, Donald Fatheree, a sheriff’s deputy in Akron, Ohio, drove his black-and-gold cruiser into one of Akron’s dying neighborhoods and came to a stop in front of a small white wood-frame house, with a neatly trimmed lawn and a beige Chevrolet parked in the driveway. He had been there many times before. Part of Fatheree’s job is to execute writs of possession, legal orders turning people out of their foreclosed homes—a disagreeable task mitigated, if only slightly, by the long grind of the process. Akron is so beset by foreclosures (there were several hundred last month) that it often takes a year or more for a foreclosure to result in an eviction.
You could never be sure what awaited on the other side of the door. As a precaution, Fatheree brought along another deputy, Jason Beam. Fatheree knocked on the front door, and, once again, no answer came. According to department policy, the evicting officers could not enter the premises unless they were accompanied by a representative from the bank. In this case, the defaulted loan had been made by Countrywide Home Loans, and had been assumed by the Federal National Mortgage Association, or Fannie Mae, which had acquired the house at a sheriff ’s auction in June. The house, appraised at forty-two thousand dollars, had sold for twenty-eight thousand.
Fatheree was ready to leave, and have the eviction rescheduled, when the men heard a noise inside the house. Dillon, worried that Addie had fallen and needed help, said that he knew a way to get in, and Fatheree told him to try. Dillon fetched a ladder, climbed to a second-floor bathroom window, and worked it open. He stepped inside and called for Addie, but heard no reply. Fatheree’s official eviction notice, the duct tape attached, lay on a bedroom dresser. Dillon found Addie in bed, reclined on her side, apparently asleep. A gun lay beside her, and he recalls wondering, Huh? Why is Miss Polk sleeping with a gun in her bed?
Two days later, Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic congressman from Cleveland, was in his Washington office browsing the Internet when he came across the story of Addie Polk from the Akron Beacon Journal:
At the age of 90, Addie Polk found herself in foreclosure this week, about to be forced from the home she’s lived in for nearly 40 years.
So, with a gun in her hand, the Akron widow apparently shot herself in the chest Wednesday afternoon as deputies were knocking on her door with eviction papers in hand.
Polk thus became the national poster child for victims of predatory lenders.
Fannie Mae forgave the mortgage after congressman Dennis Kucinich pleaded her case before Congress The Beacon Journal on October 8 reported a fund has been established to help a Polk as she recovers in Akron General Medical Center. Donations to the Addie Polk Benevolent Fund can be made at any FirstMerit bank.
Dillon said that the week after Addie shot herself he and his wife visited her in the hospital. The gun she had used, a .38-calibre handgun, had inflicted a serious wound in her shoulder, and no journalists have been allowed to speak with her. Dillon said that Addie seemed remorseful about the incident, and told him, “It was a crazy thing to do.”
She brightened, Dillon said, when he told her that she was getting her home back. “She said, ‘I am?’ I said, ‘Yeah, you’re gonna get it back.’ She was real happy to hear that.” But Dillon didn’t know how or if she would return home.
You should want to click on the headline to read the full article.
About the author: Peter J. Boyer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. Boyer's pieces for the magazine include an early report on President Clinton and the Whitewater affair, a long profile on Hillary Clinton, and an account of the trial of the "L.A. Four," and a 1995t article on Waco--"Children of Waco." Prior to joining The New Yorker, Boyer was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair from 1988 until 1992. His coverage of the media, business, sports, and political worlds included articles on Rush Limbaugh, Bob Kerrey, Robert Maxwell, Rodney King, Mike Tyson, and Jesse Helms' dispute with the National Endowment for the Arts. Boyer began his career in journalism as a reporter for the Associated Press when he was still in graduate school, and in 1978, he became a columnist for the Associated Press. In 1981, he started working at The Los Angeles Times where he reported on the entertainment industry and eventually became the paper's Southern correspondent. Also in 1981, Mr. Boyer acted as the television critic for National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" and in 1984 assumed the post of media and television correspondent for The New York Times.
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