Fearing Foreclosure: Struggle still persists in mid-Michigan, Barryton couple overcomes
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first story in a three-part series examining the prevalence of foreclosure in mid-Michigan. See the second story here.
Foreclosure.
At its simplest, the word is defined as the process of a mortgage lender repossessing a home after repeated failure to make payments. But it meant something more severe this time last year to Barryton residents Bill and Pam Phillips.
It was an actual bona-fide fear.
“There’s nothing worse than not knowing where you’re going to sleep tomorrow. And it's not just any ordinary home,” Pam said, pointing to her husband one recent afternoon. “He built this home — every piece of it. We were really fighting hard to keep it.”
In reality, it would take months for someone’s home to be foreclosed on and even longer before it’s put up for auction. That could be as soon as three or four months, according to the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, if the repossessing process is accelerated.
It’s a crisis housing counselor Teagen Lefere said really began in 2008. When the economy turned, she found her hands full with clients who didn’t want to lose their homes.
Her process always starts, she said, with the same packet of information homeowners must fill out before they can receive assistance.
Several years have passed, and still, the issue persists in mid-Michigan. In fact, she said it might be even more prevalent.
“I probably send out five new packets a week, whereas before it was one every couple of weeks,” said Lefere, a MSHDA-certified counselor at Listening Ear Crisis Center in Mount Pleasant. “It just seems to be a lot now.”
In 2011, Lefere said she worked with 168 households — the majority of whom were battling foreclosure. In 2010, she told Central Michigan Life 19 out of every 20 clients she saw had trouble making mortgage payments.
Among her most recent clients were the Phillips, who struggled with their lender for more than a year before they knew where to turn for help.
The couple received notice they were to lose the pension Bill had after spending 31 years at work for General Motors and that they would be without it for nine months. Suddenly, they could no longer make their nearly $900 monthly mortgage payments to Bank of America.
“He’s 82 years old; he can’t just go get a job,” Pam said. “And I’m disabled, so we got behind, and they were getting ready to foreclose on us.”
In March, there were 70,431 foreclosures in Michigan. That’s one in 489 housing units, according RealtyTrac.com. The ratio was far smaller in Isabella County at one in 1,271, whereas for Wayne County, which is home to Detroit, one in 306 units were foreclosed on.
But the wide spectrum of repossession might not be entirely indicative of the issue with more people than before taking preventative measures.
Mary Townley is the director of MSHDA’s homeownership division. She said foreclosure is still a battle statewide, though higher numbers continue to crop up in southeast Michigan more than anywhere else.
“Michigan is still straddling a very large foreclosure crisis,” Townley said. “Have we made progress? I think we have with programs out there. Have we solved the problem? No.”
Outside concern oriented around foreclosure, Lefere said, often comes with a few misconceptions — like that people are lazy with their money, sought the wrong kind of loan or bought a bigger house than they should have.
It could be true that there is a percentage of that, she said, but more often the circumstances may be out of a homeowner’s control, like a loss of income.
“If you were approved for a loan on two incomes and you lose one, it’s kind of hard to maintain that,” Lefere said. “The people I am working with are people who had good jobs and lost their jobs, can’t find a new job or they find a new job and it’s half of what they were making. Or a spouse gets sick.”
The road to recovery
On Tuesday, the Phillips walked around their three-bedroom house, admiring the walls and ceiling, which are covered in a species of pine wood.
Everywhere around the home are furniture and personal paraphernalia they said make the home theirs, such as the collection of wind chimes and bird houses they've mounted outside and the multitude of couches arranged in their living room to accommodate large family dinners.
The home sits on a channel leading to a nearby lake in Mecosta County, where only one in 1,112 homes were foreclosed on last month.
It’s been well more than a year since the Phillips first lost Bill’s pension, and Pam said they’re on “the road to recovery” to keeping the home that Bill built himself 40 years ago.
However, it wasn’t until well after they struggled for nine months that Pam said they came to Lefere for help. They’d sifted through stacks of paperwork every month to prove to their lender the income wasn’t coming and, after a year, it all changed.
“People said to me, ‘Aren’t you worried?’ And I (was) worried,” Pam said of foreclosure. “But my minister said to me to trust in God, and I did. Out of the blue, this name Listening Ear popped up, and I met Teagen. I was led to her. I truly believe that.”
These days, they find themselves driving between Mount Pleasant, Grand Rapids, Harrison and elsewhere for medical appointments after a heart attack Bill suffered in late February forced Pam and family members to revive him three times on the way to the hospital in Big Rapids.
After the episode, a heart defibrillator and pacemaker were placed in Bill's chest. He additionally takes the blood thinner Coumadin, which has darkened the skin on his hands or what he joked are his "permanent mittens."
Even more recently, physicians discovered a tumor on Bill's bladder, and the 82-year-old is scheduled for surgery May 3 to remove it.
While resting in Mount Pleasant after one of Bill’s appointments in late March, the two recounted every struggle. Pam, who is in her early 50s, said the couple only pays for some of the medical expenses, as Bill’s on Medicaid.
“There again,” Pam said, “we just trust in the Lord.”
Bill added, “He’ll get us through.”
“No matter where we’re going to be tomorrow,” Pam said, holding her husband’s hand, "we’ll be together.”
