CALLING ALL FIRST FRANKLIN CUSTOMERS
Hello and God bless you all:
As you read this letter we hope that you still have a home for your family.
Like many of you our homes are in foreclosure due to the actions and non actions of First Franklin (FF).
We know there are many persons out there trying to abuse the system and get a free ride, yet many of us, if not all of us, are in this situation not because we wanted to be in this situation, but because life went on. Some of us found ourselves in default as a result of loosing our income, having medical issues, the raise in the cost of living but not in our salaries, family emergencies or just live itself. Whatever your case, we did not asked to be in it.
Some of us purchase our home and gave up most of our life savings to get it, not because of greed or luxury, but because we needed a home to call our own; for our families and specially for our children.
Yet in our time of need the people that were supposed to help us and work with us not only turned their backs on us, but they did everything in their power to take away our home and turn many of our families into battle grounds full of tears, anxiety an uncertainty. “Yes, send us your paperwork we’ll look at it” we were told. Do not worry, we were being “helped” and told to hold on while we complete our review.
And we believed. Only to have our hopes shattered in a court of law or with realtors offering cash for keys, or with people just knocking on our home doors with a notice that basically read “get out in x number of days”. While this was going on, and just to add insult to injury, many of us were in dismay after learning that we did not qualified for a modification for one of the many reasons, we could not do a short sale just because, etc.
End of the dream, end of the hope, end of our homes.
Why? A question that have crossed the minds of many of us, who knows how many times and that was the first of worse questions to cross our minds and hearts as the reality of seeing our children cry because they have to move settled in. Then more questions flooded our minds. What do I do now that I’m on the street? Where do I live? A
Many of us have been put in a situation where we have nothing to loose as even our dignity was taken away with a phone call to FF. A phone call where we were asked the same questions only to be told we can not help you. Or the day we receive the court documents like we are some sort of criminals. Or the date we were made go into a court or that they put a sign in front of our houses. Or the day we received a call at work from a FF person demanding to know where the money was. Or maybe it was the day that we were offered the false hope of a so called “payment plan”. All this while, as stated by an alleged FF ex employee, they were really making money our of taking our homes away from us while giving us no real chance of solving our situations and putting us in a no win situation.
Being that we have nothing to loose is why we are writing this message. You see, we have nothing to loose but much to gain. Divided most of us have encountered the same word: foreclosure. But what if we unite and give it a good shot. At least one good one. We are not saying yeah things will happen. We can not promise that each one of us will get a solution that will be of benefit. That is beyond us. What we are saying is: let make some noise and let our voices and stories be heard. It is time that people know what is really going on with the “so called” helping hand that FF is giving us people that are not asking for a free pass, but for chance to have a roof over our heads with dignity. To pay something that will be fair, but that will also allow us to put food on the table.
What we are doing, at least three of us, is this:
1. We will draft a letter to the White House (our President) and to CNN that will explain in general our situation. This letter will also ask for help in dealing with FF.
2. We will include our stories with that letter. Now here’s where you have a choice. You can join this effort by emailing your story with FF. What is your situation? What happened when you contacted FF? What did they do or didn’t do? How they treat you? Broken promises? How they proceeded with the foreclosure? How did it affect your family life?
PLEASE BE SPECIFIC AS TO YOUR SITUATION. PROVIDE DETAILS LIKE DATES THAT YOU CALLED FF, NAMES OF THE PERSONS YOU SPOKE, FAXES AND LETTERS YOU SEND TO THEM ETC. DO NOT STATE ASSUMPTIONS OF THINGS THAT YOU THINK MIGHT BE HAPPENING. STICK TO THE FACTS AND WHAT YOU CAN PROVE.
3. People, we are writing to our President. You may agree or disagree with him. You may have voted or not voted for him. But the truth of the matter is that he is our President. THUS, PLEASE KEEP YOUR LETTERS FREE OF ANY FOUL LANGUAGE AND WRITE PROPERLY. Remember; we want to present ourselves like what we are honest, hard working people with values and dignity. Let us not go down to the level of FF.
4. Please include your name and the ages of your family members. Also, please provide a contact information for you so that you can be kept posted on what is going on with this. This could be your email address, mailing address, or phone number.
5. DO NOT, repeat DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR LOAN NUMBER, SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER OR ANY SENSITIVE INFORMATION. Again, we only need to contact you in case we receive a response so that you know what happened with our inquiry.
6. Remember we are not saying things will happen. We are just trying to do a coordinated effort to help our cause. The reasoning behind this is simple, many of us have contacted the government agencies only to run into dead ends. But many of us, I hope we are not ignored. United we stand, divided we fall.
7. Pray so that we can get what we need: Help, peace and the dignity of a home for our selves and our families.
8. Remember, we are not attorneys, rich people, politicians, or anything like that. We are regular people like you. So whatever happens, please don’t come back at us with some stupid lawsuit if things don’t go your way etc.
If interested, you can email your story to the following email address: hope4ourfamilies@yahoo.com
We will be submitting our letter along with our stories to both the President and CNN on Friday April10, 2017.
