Save Sayles Place Homes Cooperative in DC
Action: Tell HUD to support the residents of Sayles Place Cooperative; Do Not Foreclose
The residents of the Sayles Place Cooperative, a 61-unit affordable cooperative homeownership development, in Southeast DC need your help. They formulated a plan to pay off their HUD-backed mortage 7 years early after the Department of Housing and Urban Development wanted to foreclose and auction off their property - not because they missed any mortage payments, but because HUD says they are in "technical default."
Tell HUD that it should not auction off the property and put the future of these hard-working households at risk. Sayles Place Cooperative member Ms. Charles says that in 1973 HUD promised her homeownership by the year 2014. With the end in sight, HUD is now planning to foreclose on the property and auction it off to be a rental property, stripping the residents of their promised homeownership.
Background
Washingont Post articles:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/20/AR2007052001520.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/22/AR2007052201349.html
For more information please call Ryan Juskus 202-832-1845 (ask for Ryan) or email info@ahadc.net; or contact Jackie Ward who is the ANC commissioner leading the campaign for Sayles Place by email: 8a06@anc.dc.gov
Sayles Place was built as a cooperative in 1973 with a HUD-backed mortgage to promote homeownership in DC. From the beginning, HUD never kept up their responsibilities of training Boardmembers, providing technical assistance and following through with repairs and maintenance. Despite all of this, the cooperative residents have kept up their townhomes very nicely and anytime HUD inspectors found problems, the Cooperative used their reserve fund to make repairs. The Cooperative first found out about foreclosures notices around 2000 after they switched management companies (the old management company was apparently not certified by HUD and HUD never told them). In 2003 or so it hired a consultant to figure out a good plan to keep the homes and decided to prepay the remaining balance on the mortgage, which HUD had advised in their foreclosure notices. The Cooperative, on its own without HUD assistance, got the financing together, developed a plan, found a developer (East of the River CDC, Bank of America CDC, William C. Smith) and submitted its prepayment proposal to HUD which then rejected the proposal without reason. The Cooperative has never missed paying a bill, so HUD says they are in "technical default" and points to needed repairs and repeated failed REAC inspections. Residents say HUD inspectors never showed up half of the times that they claimed to have showed up and that anytime there was a failed inspection, they used their reserve funds to make repairs. In any case, HUD was going to auction off the property (now worth $5 million on a beautiful hill overlooking DC near the site of new federal office buildings) May 23rd and they postponed it for 3 weeks until June 15. Many of the original residents who purchased Co-op units in the 1970s were promised homeownership by 2014. Now, 7 years shy, HUD is trying to strip them from their opportunity. Although HUD claims the homes will remain affordable, there is a large loophole that has been used many times before that will allow the new owners to charge new residents market rates and thus they slowly provide incentives for all of the low-income (mostly government workers, teachers, working families) to leave, often by strongarm tactics. In addition, the possibility of becoming homeowners after all these years is about to escape the residents as any new owner would convert it into a rental property.
Jackie Ward, who is leading the charge for the residents, is the local ANC commissioner who is leading the charge to save Sayles Place. HUD has postponed the auction for now, but residents only have a few weeks to figure out what to do. If there isn't a resolution soon, the residents and City officials are planning a large demonstration and news conference outside HUD's offices in the next weeks.
