Did a company called DMG Asset Management buy your foreclosed home? It bought Larry Faulks’ Diamond Heights home from Wells Fargo bank after the bank put it up for foreclosure auction via a practice called dual tracking, whereby a bank forecloses and auctions off a home whose loan it is supposedly in the process of modifying. Larry Faulks is a disabled elder whose heart lives in his home of more than 40 years in Diamond Heights. He became disabled after a failed surgery and attempted to negotiate a loan modification of his loan, a sky high 8.2%. After months of faxing mountains of documents, endless phone communication and counseling sessions with a HUD (Housing and Urban Development) certified service, his home was put up for auction and was purchased by DMG investor Gilbert Chung for the bargain price of $705,000. Gilbert Chung has been charged by the US Department of Justice for conspiracy to rig bids and commit mail fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions in San Francisco and San Mateo counties beginning January 2010. Gilbert Chung—a faceless face whose name is a portrait of moral blight that is the shame of our city.
Larry Faulks matters. African-descended San Franciscan, foreclosure fighter, son and elder—he now lives in his van after a lifetime in the same house in Diamond Heights, a house that he and his father watched being built at a time when developers wouldn’t sell homes to black families. And that house still whispers Larry’s name, and the names of his siblings and his parents. The whispers turn to cries in the evening and rage with the rising sun. But it all comes down to numbers in this society and numbers have a way of forgetting, and its forgetfulness accrues with obliviousness, especially when it comes to San Francisco’s black community. How does one quantify the struggle to obtain that home? How does one put a value on the days that Larry sat in the car with his father watching their house rise from the ground? The words that were said in that car, the dreams that were said and unsaid in the wind, unfolding like a series of acts before their eyes in a play that was real like the dirt that provided the fertile landscape for the foundation that was laid in those moments. Those moments matter, those moments still live.
Larry’s parents made the move from the south and Midwest—his mother from St. Louis, his father from Hot Springs, Arkansas. His mother worked as an account clerk for Muni and the Water Department. After acquiring technical skills in the military, his father worked for KQED and later for KRON. When his father began his career, he was one of the few black television engineers in the entire United States. He spoke of his father who built the family television set from scratch in the late 50’s when the family lived in San Mateo. Maybe that was where Larry gleaned his computer and technical writing skills. “You had to be able to explain things clearly, without jargon,” says Larry when speaking of the work he immersed himself in before his disability. His failed surgery left him with bouts of serious pain—pain so bad that it still requires frequent trips to the Emergency Room. He could no longer do the job he loved and had become so adept at. Most importantly, he feels that both he and his father owe their technical careers to the Tuskegee Airmen, who proved that black people could master technology.
When his father turned on the set what did Larry see? Could he have foreseen what would happen to his house 40 years later, the house built by Joe Eichler, the only builder at the time that would sell to black families Would he have seen the banks, our good friends, like Wells Fargo, lose his paperwork repeatedly in his attempt to secure a loan modification? Or would the face on the screen have belonged to DMG investor Gilbert Chung, slowly fading into the TV snow of the American dream melting into nothing—equity stolen, justice gone.
Larry Faulks wants his house back and for others who have been hurt by DMG Asset Management to be aware of the charges handed down by the Department of Justice. Gilbert Chung’s guilty plea to the charges of auction rigging and mail fraud are serious charges that could lead to prison and of a million dollars. If you home was purchased at auction by DMG, please come forward. Your voices need to be heard.
Link to the Department of Justice press release: