MORTGAGE ARREARS: FROM DESPAIR TO HOPE

We've been running clinics in Drogheda and Dundalk for people in mortgage debt for three months now. By "we" I mean the members of the Louth Land League. We haven't made much effort with the local media and yet our clinics are usually booked out, mostly as a result of word of mouth . People from every background come to us and all have a number of things in common. Their mortgage arrears naturally are a shared characteristic, but there is something else they share, something that is hard to define. Laziness or a lack of attention might lead some to call it a shared mental state, but that doesn't cut the mustard, it doesn't describe adequately what we in the League see in the faces of the broken people who walk through our doors. The word soul, although abstract and less scientific, is what's missing. Yes that's it, they all seem to show in their faces a soul that is broken.

Although the following descriptions do not match everyone that comes into our clinic, they do represent a large number. Often skin and bone, with dark rings beneath their eyes, they shiftily come in, head bowed, eyes darting around the room. In those eyes we see fear and distrust. Fear of losing their home and their dignity. Their distrust is sourced in the fact that they have sought help in so many places before coming to us. They have often forked out their last shillings on solicitors and/or "professional" profiteers of the new debt industry and have been left in the end on their own, where they began.

When I see homeowners come in, sometimes shaking and shivering, they often remind me of depictions of victims of famine and persecution, trudging a scale of dehumanisation towards a sort of frightened, nervous animal state. Next to losing ones own life or that of a family member or friend, what can be more dehumanising than losing the family home and with little prospects of finding an affordable new place of sanctuary? I don't mean to suggest that the people who come to our clinics have reached the most severe end of the dehumanisation scale, but there can be little doubt from what they tell us as they come to trust us that they have been staring into an abyss, frozen with fear, anxiety and depression. They  no longer feel part of the human family around them as their inner most fears and worries remained unshared and they locked inside what was once a home but what now feels like a prison. Some have contemplated suicide, others have sought medical help and have in return been medicated.  

There are those who will argue for and against the national economic impact of home repossession. They'll sound sophisticated and rational in their material concerns. There is however something not being measured when it comes to the experience and impact of mortgage arrears and that's the extent and depth of human degradation and not of only the 100,000 or so people who's names are on the mortgage documents, but their children and close family. All in all possibly up to half a million people in our small nation are being dehumanised, their souls feeling separated from the human family, their hearts filled with desperation, fear and distrust.

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What we have also witnessed and learned in our clinics is that we all have the tools and skills to rebuild souls broken by the banks, to rehumanise the victims of banking greed. The principle tool to this end is listening, providing the environment to express, and listening. After listening, we offer security by making clear that now they have come to the clinic they will not be out of their home by this Christmas or next Christmas. This reassurance brings calm and makes reciprocal listening more achievable. We see their shoulders drop as they calm down, they start looking us straight in the eye, sometimes they cry, but they always leave with a renewed sense of being part of humanity again. From this point, clinic workers assist people to defend their homes through helping with letter reading and writing, affidavit construction, workshops etc.

 Sometimes, when the business of the Louth Land League can get on top of us, its a tonic to sit back at meetings and listen to members talk out the bit, to confidently recount their own experiences and plan on how we all can defend ourselves together. The tonic is in recalling back to when they first came to our door broken and hopeless. If a few people in County Louth can come together with no money but plenty of focus and create a model for rebuilding the souls of those in debt, there's little doubt you can do the same.


F. Markey