The Hunchback
Is Aguirre really leading a national movement on foreclosures?
By David Silva
To fans of City Attorney Mike Aguirre, his solution to San Diego’s foreclosure problem plays like a modern version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where every distressed homeowner is a beautiful Esmeralda, every lender a sinister archdeacon and Aguirre Quasimodo himself, swinging to the rescue.
To critics, it’s like a scene out of Night of the Living Dead, with city taxpayers holed up in a rickety house while legions of hungry deadbeats clamor at the door. Aguirre? He’s that creepy zombie girl who eats her mother.
Aguirre wants to make San Diego a “foreclosure sanctuary city”—a no-repo zone where lenders foreclose on homes at their own peril. He put a resolution before the City Council last week that would establish a voluntary moratorium on foreclosures in the city. The council sent the resolution to one of its committees for review. In July, Aguirre sued Bank of America and subsidiary Countrywide for what he described as fraudulent loan practices.
The city attorney’s actions have been hailed by some, including the Berkeley public-policy group The Greenlining Institute, as an appropriate response to the foreclosure dilemma. Others, including the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and just about any business blogger who can spell “laissez faire,” dismiss them as little more than election-year grandstanding at taxpayers’ expense.
Aguirre, a Democrat, is up for reelection Nov. 4 and is considered by many observers to be a long shot to beat his Republican challenger, Judge Jan Goldsmith. But Goldsmith now finds himself having to explain how little power a city attorney has in the grand scheme of things.
“What I’ve said from day one is that the state attorney general filed a very similar lawsuit a month before Mr. Aguirre’s lawsuit” against BofA, he says. “What I would do as city attorney is provide whatever evidence I have to the attorney general. I think the taxpayers should not be paying for a ‘frolic and detour’ into what is really a state and federal issue.”
Claims that Aguirre is grandstanding on the issue got some support Friday from Aguirre himself: He put out a press release taking partial credit for a move by four U.S. senators, including Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio, to temporarily stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from foreclosing on homes.
“A local effort by City Attorney Michael Aguirre to temporarily stop foreclosures is picking up support from powerful national leaders,” the release said.
Asked if Aguirre had anything to do with the senators’ move, Brown press secretary Meghan Dubyak said: “Not that I’m aware of.”
But what some would call grandstanding, others might simply describe as smart politics. San Diego really is in a foreclosure crisis, having suffered about 27,500 of them since 2007.
Whether for public or personal gain, or both, Aguirre has positioned himself as the only thing standing between distressed homeowners and the lenders trying to foreclose their homes out from under them.
To critics, it’s like a scene out of Night of the Living Dead, with city taxpayers holed up in a rickety house while legions of hungry deadbeats clamor at the door. Aguirre? He’s that creepy zombie girl who eats her mother.
Aguirre wants to make San Diego a “foreclosure sanctuary city”—a no-repo zone where lenders foreclose on homes at their own peril. He put a resolution before the City Council last week that would establish a voluntary moratorium on foreclosures in the city. The council sent the resolution to one of its committees for review. In July, Aguirre sued Bank of America and subsidiary Countrywide for what he described as fraudulent loan practices.
The city attorney’s actions have been hailed by some, including the Berkeley public-policy group The Greenlining Institute, as an appropriate response to the foreclosure dilemma. Others, including the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and just about any business blogger who can spell “laissez faire,” dismiss them as little more than election-year grandstanding at taxpayers’ expense.
Aguirre, a Democrat, is up for reelection Nov. 4 and is considered by many observers to be a long shot to beat his Republican challenger, Judge Jan Goldsmith. But Goldsmith now finds himself having to explain how little power a city attorney has in the grand scheme of things.
“What I’ve said from day one is that the state attorney general filed a very similar lawsuit a month before Mr. Aguirre’s lawsuit” against BofA, he says. “What I would do as city attorney is provide whatever evidence I have to the attorney general. I think the taxpayers should not be paying for a ‘frolic and detour’ into what is really a state and federal issue.”
Claims that Aguirre is grandstanding on the issue got some support Friday from Aguirre himself: He put out a press release taking partial credit for a move by four U.S. senators, including Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio, to temporarily stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from foreclosing on homes.
“A local effort by City Attorney Michael Aguirre to temporarily stop foreclosures is picking up support from powerful national leaders,” the release said.
Asked if Aguirre had anything to do with the senators’ move, Brown press secretary Meghan Dubyak said: “Not that I’m aware of.”
But what some would call grandstanding, others might simply describe as smart politics. San Diego really is in a foreclosure crisis, having suffered about 27,500 of them since 2007.
Whether for public or personal gain, or both, Aguirre has positioned himself as the only thing standing between distressed homeowners and the lenders trying to foreclose their homes out from under them.
Published: 09/17/2008
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