Posted on 05/26/2008 10:28:41 AM PDT by MovementConservative
FORECLOSURE: South Bay politician has three homes that have gone into default.
Rep. Laura Richardson, who lost her Sacramento home in a recent foreclosure auction, has also defaulted on properties in Long Beach and San Pedro, records show.
Richardson, D-Long Beach, was able to bring her payments up to date on the Long Beach home relatively quickly, but the San Pedro property lingered in the foreclosure process for almost eight months, and still has a pending auction date.
In her first interview since the news broke Tuesday that her Sacramento home had been foreclosed, Richardson blamed the foreclosure on a miscommunication by her lender. She offered no apologies for failing to make payments on three separate homes and expressed no regret for failing to pay nearly $9,000 in property taxes.
In her only admission of fault, she said she could have acted more quickly to correct the situation.
"I should have moved forward in an earlier fashion," she said. "I acknowledge that. I intend never to conduct business in that fashion again."
Asked how she planned to reimburse the state for her unpaid property taxes, Richardson said, "I have financial obligations, and I will fulfill those financial obligations. - There will be no debts to the state of California."
In an hour-and-a-half interview in the offices of the Press-Telegram, Richardson declined to answer numerous detailed questions about her finances. For example, she refused to discuss the mortgage terms on the Sacramento house, refused to say how many payments she had made, and refused to say when she learned that the mortgage was in default.
A notice of default was issued in December, but Richardson offered no evidence that she had taken any remedial action before April. By then, the auction had already been scheduled for one month.
The home, which Richardson bought in January 2007 for $535,000, sold at auction on May 7 to a real estate investor for $388,000. The lender, Washington Mutual Bank, took a loss of nearly $200,000 on the deal, and the buyer, James York, agreed to pay her property tax bill.
Richardson said that she was not aware the home had sold until she was contacted by reporters this week. She produced correspondence from Washington Mutual Home Loans, dated April 17, that indicated her loan was reinstated and the auction would be put on hold until June 4.
She produced an e-mail, dated Thursday, indicating that she was trying to work with the lender to have the foreclosure rescinded.
A spokeswoman for Washington Mutual Bank, Sara Gaugl, declined to comment on the matter.
"We have not received consent from Ms. Richardson that would allow us to discuss her loan situation," Gaugl said.
County records indicate that the San Pedro home went into default in September 2007, at which point Richardson was behind on her payments by $12,410.71, and had made no payments since June.
A notice of trustee sale was issued on April 17, and an auction was scheduled for May 14 on the courthouse steps in Norwalk. The outstanding loan balance was $367,436, on an original 2005 loan of $359,000.
However, the auction was put on hold.
Richardson produced records from Wells Fargo Bank, which holds the note on her San Pedro home. That document, dated March 21, indicated that Richardson had qualified for a loan modification that would prevent the foreclosure from going forward.
Cal Western Reconveyance Corp., which was responsible for collecting the debt, confirmed that a hold had been placed on the auction, and the auction date had been postponed to July 14, pending a workout of the loan.
Again, Richardson produced no document to confirm that she took any remedial action on the San Pedro property before March.
The Long Beach home, which is Richardson's primary address, went into default on March 28. Richardson had not made a payment on the house since November, and owed $19,921.74 on the property. Three days later, the default was rescinded, indicating that Richardson had arranged to make the payments.
While Richardson did not apologize for her actions, she did attempt to explain them.
In 2005, Richardson was a Long Beach councilwoman and a staffer for Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante. She was elected to the Assembly in 2006 and then to Congress in 2007, to fill a seat vacated by the death of Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald.
Richardson loaned her Assembly campaign $100,000 in the summer of 2006, borrowing against the equity in her Long Beach home. After her election, she raised enough money to pay herself back, but immediately had to plow $77,500 in loans to her congressional campaign.
"I am not financially wealthy," she said. "I am not a millionaire. - Based upon what I was going through, changing four jobs in less than one year, I think any American would understand what that does in terms of a person's financial stability."
As a member of Congress, Richardson makes $169,300 a year. As a member of the Assembly, she made about $116,000, plus a per diem for living expenses in Sacramento.
When it was pointed out that the average American makes far less than that, Richardson responded, "The average American is not responsible for maintaining several households."
Richardson said she did not make an effort to sell the Sacramento home, even after she was elected to Congress, and still hoped to rent it out.
Richardson attempted to link her situation to the plight of others facing foreclosure, and said the experience would help make her a better advocate on foreclosure issues.
"I think this is what many Americans are unfortunately facing right now," she said. "I am concerned that I can take what I have learned from this to help somebody else. - Many people are one step away from issues that are life-changing moments. When a person moves across the country, that is a life-changing moment."
Richardson noted that unlike the state Legislature, the U.S. Congress does not provide for living expenses.
"On the federal level, there is no per diem," she said. "They don't pay for you to move."
Richardson is renting an apartment in the Washington, D.C., area. She declined to disclose or discuss her credit score.
She has begun to pay down her congressional campaign debt, and repaid herself $18,000 of the $77,500 in personal loans. She still owes $220,000 to her campaign consultant - which is unusual for a successful campaign - and about $330,000 overall.
Richardson said she would advise anyone in her circumstance "to seek assistance immediately" and to maintain contact with their lenders.
She said she ultimately hopes to testify about her situation in front of the Senate, and will write to the president to urge him to sign a package of foreclosure legislation.
"We need to put a better process in place, so a person's home is not being sold up underneath them," she said. "We have to improve the way we respond to this crisis."
gene.maddaus@dailybreeze.com
Staff Writer Sandy Mazza contributed to this article.
I saw plenty of D’s in the article
Owe back taxes? No problem, garnish her wages!
dung.
I forgot to pay my property taxes of $9,000 .... yea sure.
sschu
And how many D’s did you see in the headline?
Time to resign.
guilty
Why does she need three homes?
resign? she needs the $
Rep. Laura Richardson Democrat, had three houses Sacramento, Long Beach, and San Pedro. If the foreclosure-avoided Long Beach home is her primary residence then the defaulted Sacramento and Long Beach properties are likely rental investments or speculations. Very possibly Democrat Laura Richardson was untruthful in her mortgage application and claimed the properties as Primary Residence allowing better mortgage terms but leaving the lender with the risks; Real Estate Speculator FRAUD is part of the current mortgage problem.
I got to think this will be in a lot of GOP ads during the elections. This, and the guy (Jefferson?) stuffing bribe money into his freezer.
>>>”I should have moved forward in an earlier fashion...”<<<
Like people did in the 1950’s?
Where did this woman attend school?
The GOP lost the moral high ground when they failed to police themselves on Duke Cunningham taking bribes, Foley hitting on Pages, and Larry Craig toe-tapping in bathroom stalls.
Likely greed....She believed the housing market would always go up, up, up. Now that it hasn't, she's shifting the blame to others. We need a bailout and to fix the system talk and legislation.
ask that guy that recently had articles run on him that bought 9 properties around california and arizona all with no-doc, neg-arm loans and now all of them are in forclosure and his only excuse for all this was, “whoops”.
Don’t worry. Barney Frank is going to give her a tax payer funded bailout. Problem solved.
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