Peon's Not Sure It's Real

As the five (5) of you who read this blog know, I've written a blog for California tenants who have the misfortune to live in buildings where the landlord is facing foreclosure. I wrote what became the blog at the end of 2007, when there weren't many of us thinking about this issue. More people have thought about it since then, but it's still a hard slog, particularly here in Sacramento, where our city mothers and fathers have studiously avoided any knowledge of the problem, and haven't been falling over themselves to come up with any help for tenants. Sometimes I feel like a voice in the wilderness, but then I realize that J has to listen to me, whether he wants to or not.

But then something happens. And I think, people are paying attention after all. Someone out there noticed. And it was someone with some power, someone who could do something. Now it's likely that tenant groups, neighborhood organizations and public health officials have been screaming for no little time, but the City Attorney in Los Angeles has finally gone after one of the Bad Boy Banks for illegal eviction of tenants in its foreclosed properties and then allowing the properties to deteriorate so badly that they became public health hazards.

And while Yves Smith doesn't think much of going after Deutsche Bank, the decision to, shall we say, do them first, brought a smile to my face. I noted that Deutsche Bank was particularly badly behaved from the beginning and, having failed to reform even a tiny bit during the crisis, informed Tenants Together last year that they weren't bound by no stinkin' laws. I promise to smile only a little as the case unfolds, but will do a small jig 'round the living room when the tenants who suffered illegal eviction and/or had to live in degraded conditions get the monetary settlements coming to them.