The Pain of Foreclosure

For Joyce Griffin and Thousands of Others Who Face Losing Their Homes, Sadness and Uncertainty Overshadow a Season of Cheer

Joyce Griffin pulled out the sparkly white artificial Christmas tree she stores in the basement of her Anne Arundel County duplex, draped it with blue and red tinsel, and placed a tiny lighted angel on top. Then she sat down to cry.

Roberta, the 8-year-old niece Griffin has raised since shortly after her birth, stopped fooling with a wreath of red jingle bells and looked at her aunt, puzzled. Griffin tried to explain that this might be the last Christmas they celebrate in their home. "You mean we can't stay here?" said her niece, who is known as Tink.

Griffin, 49, like hundreds of thousands of homeowners across the country, is in foreclosure. Recently, she sat at the dining room table where for six years she has served holiday meals to her large, extended family of 19 brothers and five sisters, where they all hope to gather again this Christmas, and shook her head. "What will I do if I lose this house? What will I do? I think about it all the time."

She is part of what economists are calling a nationwide epidemic as foreclosure rates reach record levels. The trend cuts across geographic, economic and social boundaries. Patricia Ammerman, a Washington area real estate agent who specializes in foreclosure properties, said many of her clients are affluent professionals who often do not want her to put up "For Sale" signs. "They don't want people to know," she said.

In Maryland, 8,500 loans went into foreclosure from July through September, propelling the state to 16th nationwide in foreclosure filing rates from 37th during the same period a year earlier, said RealtyTrac, a service that follows foreclosure trends. Virginia, with 7,700 foreclosures, was ranked 21st, a 500 percent increase over the same period last year. The District has also faced an explosive rise in foreclosures. There were 331 filings in the third quarter, a 900 percent increase over second-quarter filings.

And although a majority of those facing foreclosure might not be on the street for Christmas -- the process often takes months to complete -- they, like Griffin, will go through this usually joyous season knowing that next year, many will probably be out of their homes. Although President Bush recently proposed a plan to help bail out homeowners in trouble, the program is designed to help those who have fallen one or two mortgage payments behind and whose mortgage interest rates are about to adjust higher. The proposed program would not help those already in foreclosure, such as Griffin.

Griffin said she did not know that she was being foreclosed on until she arrived home one day last year after walking her niece home from school and found a note taped to the front door. "I purchased your home at the foreclosure auction," the note read in part. "We need to work together to make this an orderly transition." An investor had bought the duplex, and she wanted Griffin out.

Maryland law requires only that banks send notice of foreclosure. There is no requirement of proof that the notice has been received. Griffin maintains she never received a foreclosure notice.

"For every other kind of lawsuit, there is a requirement that notice is received, except for foreclosures," said Phillip Robinson, an attorney with the nonprofit legal aid group Civil Justice, who is helping Griffin fight her foreclosure in court. "How many other people in Maryland are being foreclosed on this Christmas that don't even know about it?"

Griffin was the first member of her family to break out of public housing and buy a home. She was making $12 an hour as a certified nursing assistant and saved for the down payment for two decades, stuffing dimes, dollar bills and whatever loose change she had into a plastic jar in her bedroom closet.

When the water jug was full, she had $5,000. She pooled that with $5,000 from her then-fiance, moving company employee Herberto Tubaya, and they bought a duplex in Pasadena, north of Annapolis, for $123,000 on May 15, 2001.

Griffin said she tried to do everything right when she bought the home. She went through a Fannie Mae counseling program for first-time buyers. The course's Certificate of Achievement is framed and displayed on a wall among pictures of her niece. Her family helped her move to her $930-a-month duplex from her $900-a-month, three-bedroom apartment in Annapolis. She had a Federal Housing Administration loan with a 30-year fixed interest rate of 6.5 percent.