Newsome originally bought the cream-colored townhouse in 1997 for about $150,000.
“I was the first person to buy one of the homes in this development,” she said.
But things started to unravel around the economic downturn. Newsome lost her job running a local nonprofit. She got divorced, and her two daughters were both in college out of state.
So Newsome decided she needed to take out a second loan. “And I got behind on that second loan,” she said. “So the second lender placed a foreclosure.”
Newsome remembers clearly what happened next.
“So I was at work one day and my daughter called me and she said, ‘Mom the sheriff is here. And we are outside with two emergency suitcases and they've already changed the locks,’” Newsome remembered.
The home was auctioned off to an investor and she was evicted. Newsome was given four hours to collect all her belongings that were locked inside. Most of her things ended up left behind.
She moved into a motel with her daughters in Silicon Valley, where she worked as a technology salesperson. Eventually she moved back in with her parents.
Around the same time, the Occupy movement was beginning to expand beyond Wall Street, and a new movement was taking place to reclaim vacant property and homes lost to the foreclosure crisis.
Newsome heard about it and got in touch with local organizers, which included Occupy Oakland and Oakland ACCE, the group that has been working recently with Moms 4 Housing.
And she made a decision: she was going to do whatever it took to move back in.
“And I said I've got to take that risk because I've gotta get my house back,” she said.
The occupation took months. Most nights Newsome slept on the floor in a sleeping bag alongside her two older daughters. The constant battle with law enforcement took its toll. Newsome ended up having to take time off work because of stress.
Similar to Moms 4 Housing, the movement around Newsome’s home swelled with supporters, eager to act as eviction defense when the sheriff showed up.
“Whenever anybody — a mayor, law enforcement, homeowner's association — if anybody like that showed up, somebody hit the phone tree,” she said. “And there was like a human barrier.”
And organizers began to take on the banks. For two hours, they shut down the branch of Chase Bank in downtown Oakland where Newsome had her mortgage. Activists flew to San Diego to protest outside the office of Residential Capital Mortgage Income Fund, the second lender.
Newsome made her own personal plea to the CEO of that lender.
“I put it all in a letter to him to explain my total situation,” Newsome said. “And when I wrote him the personal letter, they took the second loan off basically."
She eventually got the deed back and is once again the rightful owner of her house. But she said the fight was bigger than just her.
“This is for my entire West Oakland community,” she said.
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January 22, 2020 at 09:01PM
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Nearly a Decade Ago, This Oakland Mom Protested and Won Her House Back - KQED
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