Freeze all foreclosures and evictions nationwide!

The New York Times reports today that law enforcement officers in Chicago will no longer evict residents from foreclosed properties. The move was announced by Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart:

The department was on pace to conduct 4,700 foreclosures this year, nearly triple the number from two years ago, Sheriff Dart said.

Housing advocates said that they thought the measure was the first of its kind, but that in recent years, several sheriffs and judges around the country had taken other steps to slow foreclosure proceedings, like requiring lenders to produce titles proving they owned the properties in question. In Philadelphia this year, Sheriff John D. Green temporarily suspended sales of foreclosed properties.

Sheriff Dart said he took the measure because an increasing number of the residents being evicted were renters who might have been dutifully paying their rent, and might have had no knowledge that the owner was behind on the mortgage.

With the U.S. government bailing out pretty much the entire financial industry and planning to take over God knows how many banks, let's put a condition on the bailout: No foreclosures, no evictions, period, until further notice. Appropriate emergency legislation on the national and local level should be a high priority.

Photo: ABC News.

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