There have been a bunch of stories along the lines of this one lately, where banks or their hired help break into people's houses, clean them out, and change the locks without having any legal right to do so.
TRUCKEE, Calif. — When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend ski trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks.
When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words “Together Forever,” that contained the ashes of her late husband, Robert.
As Atrios says, if one of us were to do exactly the same thing, we'd get tossed in prison for several years. But banks can do it, and our legal system seems to regard it as no more than an administrative error.
Identifying the number of homeowners who were locked out illegally is difficult. But banks and their representatives insist that situations like Ms. Ash’s represent just a tiny percentage of foreclosures.
That really shouldn't matter, should it? I'm sure burglars and their legal representatives could point out that situations where the burglars break into a house and steal stuff represent just a tiny percentage of the houses that they could have broken into.
We have two systems of law in this country: one for the wealthy and connected, and another for everyone else.
I'll be damned if I know what to do about it, because the one guy who tried to make an issue of things like this has been run out of politics (and probably for precisely that reason), but it's an outrage just the same.
