Skip to main content

News

Search News

Topics
Date Published Between

For the Media

For media inquiries, call CWA Communications at 202-434-1168 or email comms@cwa-union.org. To read about CWA Members, Leadership or Industries, visit our About page.

CWA Saves Member's NJ Home From Foreclosure

Thanks to an outpouring of community support, Paulette McQueen, a CWA Local 1037 in-home child care provider and shop steward, will be able to safely stay in her previously foreclosed home.

We won!

Thanks to an outpouring of community support, Paulette McQueen, a CWA Local 1037 in-home child care provider and shop steward, will be able to safely stay in her previously foreclosed home.

In June 2010, McQueen missed one mortgage payment to Wells Fargo. The very next month, she attempted to hand deliver two payments – one for the missed month and another for the current month – but the bank refused and began to foreclose on her Irvington home, where she works and lives with her family. A sheriff's sale was soon scheduled.

But CWA wasn't going to let that happen. The union partnered with NJ Communities United, Occupy Homes and the Home Defenders League to help McQueen and her family. Together they organized demonstrations, signed petitions and sent delegations to Wells Fargo.

Paulette

Paulette McQueen, a shop steward with CWA Local 1037 and an in-home child care provider, celebrates success by CWA and allies forcing Wells Fargo to back off its illegal effort to foreclose on her home.

CWA Local 1037 President Ken McNamara wrote in an op-ed today:

The collective power of these organizations successfully stopped an impending sheriff's sale and won a trial mortgage-modification from Wells Fargo that has allowed Paulette and her family to stay in their home.

But after Paulette and her family met all the terms of the trial modification for the three-month period, Wells Fargo changed the terms of its own agreement and re-scheduled the sheriff's sale. After more negotiations, more public pressure, and the added weight of our national leaders at the Communications Workers of America, Wells Fargo finally signed a document guaranteeing a mortgage modification that keeps Paulette and her family safe in their home.

Despite this hard-won victory, the process raises an obvious question: If Wells Fargo agreed to a trial modification and Paulette complied with the terms, then how can Wells Fargo even consider not honoring its agreement with Paulette?

The answer is also obvious: because Wells Fargo has done this to struggling homeowners before, and gotten away with it. 

Of course, it didn't have to be this way. McQueen's victory is bittersweet. McNamara concludes:

Paulette and other homeowners like her should not have to wage this type of campaign to achieve justice, or in this case simple fairness and the rule of law. They should be able to rely on the legal system and regulatory agencies to protect their interests. Unfortunately the New Jersey attorney general's office doesn't consider families like Paulette's worthy of their attention.