Robert Galanida was a skinny teenager when a drunken driver rammed the pickup he was riding in, hurtling him to the blacktop and paralyzing him from his shoulders down.
With the help of multimillion-dollar legal and insurance settlements, he and his mother now live comfortably on annuity payments of $22,000 a month.
So they are at a loss as to why his mortgage servicer, Bank of America, has repeatedly tried to evict him from his Tualatin home. Custom-built 14 years ago for less than $400,000, it boasts wide halls and doorways to accommodate his wheelchair and an air purification system to keep his body temperature and breathing in check.
How did someone who could so clearly afford a $4,800 monthly loan payment fall so far behind?
Galanida, 41, stopped payment in 2009, insisting a discrepancy arose in his loan after Bank of America took it over from troubled Countrywide Home Loans. Bank representatives told him to continue withholding payments while they investigated, his mother said.
But then, without offering Galanida a workaround plan, the bank foreclosed on his home, sold it to another lender and tried to evict him. Galanida's pleas for help from federal authorities and Oregon Attorney General John Kroger haven't resolved matters.
"I am not aware of any options to save the house," a paralegal with Bank of America's law firm told Galanida on July 29.
Galanida's case exemplifies the flawed foreclosure and modification practices that have befuddled distressed homeowners and led to dozens of lawsuits against Bank of America in Oregon alone. The bank now faces a crisis in investor confidence amid mushrooming legal bills and loan costs linked to the Countrywide purchase.
With the help of multimillion-dollar legal and insurance settlements, he and his mother now live comfortably on annuity payments of $22,000 a month.
So they are at a loss as to why his mortgage servicer, Bank of America, has repeatedly tried to evict him from his Tualatin home. Custom-built 14 years ago for less than $400,000, it boasts wide halls and doorways to accommodate his wheelchair and an air purification system to keep his body temperature and breathing in check.
How did someone who could so clearly afford a $4,800 monthly loan payment fall so far behind?
Galanida, 41, stopped payment in 2009, insisting a discrepancy arose in his loan after Bank of America took it over from troubled Countrywide Home Loans. Bank representatives told him to continue withholding payments while they investigated, his mother said.
But then, without offering Galanida a workaround plan, the bank foreclosed on his home, sold it to another lender and tried to evict him. Galanida's pleas for help from federal authorities and Oregon Attorney General John Kroger haven't resolved matters.
"I am not aware of any options to save the house," a paralegal with Bank of America's law firm told Galanida on July 29.
Galanida's case exemplifies the flawed foreclosure and modification practices that have befuddled distressed homeowners and led to dozens of lawsuits against Bank of America in Oregon alone. The bank now faces a crisis in investor confidence amid mushrooming legal bills and loan costs linked to the Countrywide purchase.
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