Now here is novel idea – perhaps Elk Grove community activist and the city council can focus on a real problem

While the Elk Grove, Calif. City Council contemplates whether or not to pass an anti-gang ordinance (they will in the yet another case of political pandering), here is something that if they and community activist really want to help out citizens and curtail crime should focus on - why not organize and help people save their homes from ‘loan sharks’ like Countrywide Mortgage.

That’s exactly what a group of vocal activist has been able to do in Cleveland. OH.

Seeing mortgage giants like Countrywide prey on working-class home-owners (read not ‘flippers’ or so-called ‘investors’), Cleveland based East Side Organizing Project (ESOP) has successfully battled the Calabasas, Calif. based lending giant.

Interestingly, ESOP started over 10 years ago to help parents with safety issues around schools. Seeing that its membership and participation drop starting in 1999, they soon discovered families were losing homes to foreclosure and sprung into action.

According to the AP story, ESOP was able to apply pressure to lenders and advocate for home-owners;

One after another, the group squeezed and cajoled eight companies and their subsidiaries into signing pacts giving it direct access to a single executive with the authority to restructure problem loans. The companies have agreed to cut interest rates and waive penalty fees and past-due balances.

Last year, ESOP — one of four groups that counsel homeowners referred by Cuyahoga County's foreclosure rescue program — says it got mortgages reworked for about 1,500 homeowners, most already in foreclosure.

So what does this mean for Elk Grove?

While many sincere civic-minded people as well as the current city council are focusing their efforts on reducing crime with the unconstitutional magic bullet, also known as the ‘anti-gang ordinance,’ perhaps a better deterrent to crime in Elk Grove would be to keep houses occupied with owners. Nothing attracts crime more than empty homes with dead grass, broken windows and broken families.

Community activist, why not use your energy and talent and target it at the white collar gangs that have put Elk Grove home owners and the whole community in real peril which will result in real crime, most notably an increase in domestic violence. Don’t waste your efforts on some Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld like vague threat of imminent street gang violence.

As for the city counsel, why not call out these lenders who are squeezing real Elk Grove homeowners from your collective bully-pulpit? Mayor Gary Davis, why not get on the local television news and say you are mad-as-hell about how the good citizens of Elk Grove are being squeezed and you won't ease until there is some relief. Council member Jim Cooper; you know how to work the local media, use that skill NOW to help ward off this problem. Channel the spirit of Joe Serna if you must.

Ultimately public safety funding will be threatened by weak tax receipts from empty and derelict homes and diminished sales tax revenues brought about by the foreclosure meltdown. It is already happening to the Elk Grove Unified School District and the Cosumnes Community Services District.

Now isn’t that a real and measurable threat? You should be hopping mad at the fraud!

Do you five council members have the courage to call these predators out and go to bat for your constituents or are you so snug in bed with big-business that will you turn a blind eye?

And finally a word for candidate Katherine Maestas.

Here is a free campaign idea. Seeing as you have not come forward with any bold initiatives, why not take this and run with it?

Why not say that if elected, you will use your position as a member of the city council to push the City of Elk Grove to go after lenders like ESOP did? If they can succeed, why can’t the city?

A huge undertaking? Sure, but isn't that real leadership in the vein of Joe Serna, MLK or Cesar Chavez?

It would be a sea change to see a council member who is more interested with homeowners than some Mercedes-driving-Gucci-shoe-wearing real estate developer type that make our city hall their haunt. Also you can bet Sophia Scherman wouldn’t have the courage to stand up for the small guy.