Foreclosures: Stop Cancer Survivor's Eviction!

Wells Fargo Bank and US Bank have chosen to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness Month by trying to evict breast cancer survivors from their homes.

Last week, Ana Casas Wilson — a wheelchair-bound woman with cerebral palsy and terminal stage-four breast cancer, and who has struggled for months to get Wells Fargo and US Bank to accept her money and stop foreclosing on her home of 40 years — received a final five-day notice to vacate from L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca’s office. Wilson and her family briefly fell behind on her payments after she had to go into the hospital for a double mastectomy, as I described in an earlier post. She and her friends and supporters have launched a round-the-clock vigil at her home in a blue-collar suburb outside Los Angeles (8968 San Juan Ave., South Gate, CA 90280) to resist eviction, as the Los Angeles Times reported last week.

It turns out that Wilson isn’t the only cancer victim that Wells Fargo and US Bank are trying to evict. Community groups around the country have met with others in a similar situation. One of them is retired police detective Jacqueline Barber. She spent 20 years on the Atlanta police force, only retiring after she was injured by a car in the line of duty. In 2009, the predatory loan on her house caused her monthly payment to go up by $1500, and she fought to stay current, according to a local Atlanta news outlet. Then she was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer and had to undergo aggressive treatment to save her life. She fought back against the disease, and spent months filling out forms and asking Wells Fargo for modifications to her mortgage.

A Wells Fargo Executive Vice President assured her they were working on her case. Instead, they sold her loan to US Bank at a foreclosure auction, and now she’s fighting imminent eviction. The banks are refusing even to sell the home to friends and family who have banded together to help Jacqueline.

We all know that increased stress makes it harder for the body to fight back against serious illness. There is little in life that is more stressful than being evicted. By pursuing these foreclosure evictions US Bank and Wells Fargo are hurting the lives of Ana and Jacqueline.

You can help by:

• Signing this petition to Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and US Bank CEO Richard Davis to stop sickness evictions and commit to no more illness foreclosures.

• Adding your name to the more than 13,000 people who have already signed this other petition on behalf of Ana Casas Wilson.

• Emailing your friends and posting this on your Facebook page to encourage others to join the campaign to help Ana and others like her save their homes from unfair evictions.

• Joining Ana and her friends and supporters at the round-the-clock vigil at her home at (8968 San Juan Ave., South Gate, CA 90280) to resist eviction.

• Contacting Peter Kuhns, an organizer for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) at (213) 272-1141 to offer your help.

This post first appeared on Huffington Post and is republished with permission.