Stolen

I just finished watching this and thought of an interesting idea. What if these communities being foreclosed on would get together with the victims and purchase the houses back at a fraction of the inflated original purchase price. Then, the community, as a whole, owns this house. They could offer to rent it to the family at an affordable price, they could sell it back to the family at the cost plus a few percent, they could turn already empty houses into community centers or libraries, or rent them out as local businesses – a baker, a coffee shop, a corner deli/grocery store, etc…
this can solve at least two major problems of all communities: marginalization and depreciation. By keeping people where they are, they develop the roots of the community, and by stopping an artificial market decline (created by the lenders themselves), they preserve the economic functionality of the community. By having the local community invested, the bonds of the community are more tightly intertwined. Further, by displacing the giant lenders who sit far away and only know numbers, the community reclaims its own future and throws off the leach that is draining it of life.
With some good organizing, the community can even rally to challenge the banks. Imagine a group of people from a neighborhood each empowered to bid on a house that is up auction from their neighborhood, refusing to allow a bid to start anywhere near where the bank expects it, instead offering five thousand for every hundred thousand. Here, the community stands to profit significantly in the same way a speculator would, except that it is speculating on their own future, enabling the earnings to stay within the community.
By working from the start with home owners facing foreclosure, a community can bring pressure to bear on the foreclosing entity – further, if it makes sense, force the foreclosure and pick it up at the auction. A nice addition would be to get the local police or district attorney – whomever facilitates evictions to refuse to enforce them due to the damage done, in the same way many places have rules against high speed pursuits because it endangers the public more. Personally, I’m kind of surprised that isn’t already in place in these high-impact places.