Tomorrow on the Fourth Floor of City Hall at 11AM, Seth Williams will be holding a pretty exciting press conference.

He'll announce the endorsement of important Philadelphia progressive groups spanning from gay rights to poor people's organizing: Liberty City Democratic Club, ACORN, Americans for Democratic Action, Neighborhood Networks, and Philly for Change. These endorsements are a major vote of confidence from a lot of different and important constituencies, and I think reflect Seth's attention to how crime and the criminal justice system affect people's lives in different ways beyond a simple binary of victim and perpetrator.

He'll also unveil a new policy paper, dealing with economic justice. The proposal shows a great vision of how the DA's office has power to positively affect the lives of many more Philadelphians than it has in the past.

Also: stay tuned for another YPP-sponsored benefit for Seth coming up on May 8th. Email info@youngphillypolitics.com to get on the host committee!

Friends,

As most of you are aware, ACORN and our successful efforts to register 1.3 million low and moderate income people has come under fire in recent weeks. These attacks are the result of a small group of political operatives trying to orchestrate hysteria about "voter fraud" and manufacture public outrage that they can then use to justify fraudulently challenging voters at the polls and other schemes to suppress the votes of millions of low- income & minority Americans.

In Pennsylvania, ACORN has registered 140,000 new voters; 85,000 of those in Philadelphia. Despite the recent hype, less than 1.5% of the registration cards we submitted had missing or suspicious information. Our full-time quality control staff called every card we collected and separated out those we could not verify; we then handed them in, in three piles, with a cover sheets labeled “suspicious”, “unverified”, or “verified” (98.5%).

We wanted to tell you this because we value our relationship with you. Despite our best efforts, and a few balanced reports in recent days, we have found it difficult to break through the partisan sound machine that holds multiple press conferences a day spouting misinformation.

We must continue to do our work helping families save their homes, keep their heat on, fix their children’s schools, and find accessible and affordable healthcare. We must also ensure that the 1.3 million we have registered across the country and the millions of other new and not-so-new registrants do not face undue challenges or intimidation when they cast their ballot.

Bad registration cards do not equal bad votes. In fact, there has never been a fraudulent vote cast in this way. The Department of Justice reports that there have been less than 100 attempts at voter impersonation at the polls since its nationwide “crackdown” began in 2002. The instances of voter suppression continue to be all too common.

We urge you to watch this brief video on our work and the various attempts to suppress the vote over the last decade: Brave New Films: The Truth About ACORN.

For a lighter take check out Stephen Colbert’s recent segment on ACORN at: Colbert Report: 10/21

The Daily News today editorialized in favor of the demands PUP and the coalition of groups working here to prevent foreclosure made before City Council last week.The editorial board wrote:

Those people on the front lines of the issue - such as ACORN and Philadelphia Unemployment Project- seem to agree that pressure must be put on loan servicers to work more closely with local housing agencies to devise workout agreements with homeowners facing foreclosure.

Lenders and servicers can't work fast enough - or don't want to - to handle large numbers of mortgage workouts. But they need to be pressured to come to the table and work with those on the front lines to help homeowners.

Click read more for a breakdown of our demands!

Today the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by .75 of a percentage point. Everywhere you look, the subprime lending crisis appears to be hurtling the US into a recession. Newspaper stories talk about cities having to deal with epidemics of foreclosures. While all of this is true, the whole thing is a useful exercise in looking at where the media priorities of the big national newspapers lie. Because, while cities across the Country are certainly experiencing high levels of foreclosures, in reality, they are not much higher than they have been for years. In other words, yeah, subprime lending is hurting us, but, it has been hurting us for plenty long before now.

One way to measure foreclosures is to look at foreclosure filings per 1000 owner-occupied homes.

These are the rates of foreclosure in Philly per 1000 owner-occupied homes (2000-2003 numbers here):

2000: 14.6
2001: 17.1
2002: 18.2
2003: 18.1
2004: 16.1
2005: 15.9
2006: 16.4

I don't have 2007 numbers, but, I suspect they will not be higher than 2002-2003, when the wild-wild west world of 1998-99 loans were all coming through the foreclosure pipeline. Does that mean Philly is not hurting? Certainly not. But simply, it is nothing new. For example, in 2005, I rode around Philly with a reporter who wrote this:

PHILADELPHIA -- To walk Thayer Street in northeast Philadelphia is to count, door by door, the economic devastation afflicting a working-class neighborhood. On a single block, 18 of the 42 brick rowhouses have gone into foreclosure in the past three years.

There's Marciela Perez, who fell ill with cancer, lacked health insurance and stopped making mortgage payments. Barrel-chested Richard Hidalgo, who got divorced and could no longer make his monthly nut. And Mike O'Mara, a rawboned and crew-cut truck driver who took on too much debt, lost his job and fell behind on his mortgage.

"Mortgage companies convinced us to refinance, and each time our bill went up," O'Mara said as he surveyed his narrow street from his shaded front porch. "You fall behind and they swoop down on you."

Philadelphia, its suburbs and indeed much of Pennsylvania have experienced a foreclosure epidemic as low-income homeowners take on mortgage debt they cannot afford. In 2000, the Philadelphia sheriff auctioned 300 to 400 foreclosed properties a month; now he handles more than 1,000 a month. Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, had record auctions of foreclosed homes, and officials speak of a "Depression-era" problem. The foreclosures fall particularly hard on black and Latino families.

In a TRF study on Predatory Lending (full disclosure: I worked on both reports), for example, one neighborhood that was closely examined- Harrowgate- had about 173 foreclosures per 1000 owner-occupied properties for the years 2000-2003. To me, at least, that is a stunning amount of foreclosures, and we are talking about a time period from up to eight years ago.

Because of the advocacy community in Philly- groups like PUP, CLS, ACORN, etc., because of a progressive minded Secretary of Banking under Rendell, because of having TRF located in Philly, because of the Daily News and Marian Tasco taking on predatory lending in... 2001, this really, truly, is nothing new. Yet, to read the New York Times, this phenomenon is like nothing before.

Part of this is that the pain of subprime lending is reaching new communities, and that the Wall Street house of cards is falling, so it is having a more mainstream effect. However, even that could have been forecasted, considering that it has long been routine for the biggest subprime lenders to go out of business after ravaging communities. The difference now is that mainstream lenders- Countrywide, Citi, etc., and mainstream investors- Bear Sterns, Morgan Stanley, etc have woven themselves deep enough into the morass, that just about everyone is paying attention.

However, for the average Philadelphian, has much changed? No. The crisis that we had before is the same crisis we have now. The only difference is now, the national media is 100 percent fixed on the problem.

But, Philly still has a great predatory lending bill on the books. All that would have to happen for it to take effect would be for Dwight Evans and Vince Fumo to undo Act 55- the State preemption bill. What do you say, fellas? Want to undo some of the damage you wrought?

There's a letter of support below for PA House Bill 824. Please sign it. Bill 824 returns crucial due process and other protections that would help prevent unnecessary and unfair utility terminations to low-income people. These have increased substantially under a 2004 law.

It's about to be winter. Clearly time to act.

The new bill would: remedy oppressive security deposits for utilities, ease fees for reconnection, create requirements that low-income families be informed of supportive programs and grants, incrases payment agreement time frames, among other safe and humane changes.

The letter, and information about how to sign on, is below.