Economist Faces Eviction after Questionable Foreclosure Process
Ithaca’s eviction system keeps kicking residents of color out of their homes.
After a terrible car accident changed their lives forever, Ithaca rallied behind Cornell postdoc Ben Okumu and his family in 2009. Dr. Okumu, now 56, is an economist who advises developing nations in Africa. He continues to be touched by that community care, but the fallout from the accident is still affecting them over a decade later.
When the 2020 COVID lockdown hit, Okumu had been in Kenya receiving treatment for chronic injuries that came as a result of the 2009 accident.
But in fact, he had been fending off foreclosure attempts since the accident. “They were foreclosing on me when my wife was in the mortuary. And I was completely flattened, I was struggling for my life in Nairobi.” Okumu recalled, noting that he too had been severely injured during the accident.
During a several-year stretch he was unable to resume his life in Ithaca due to COVID, Community Bank completed a foreclosure on Okumu’s family’s home. After the recent foreclosure, the Okumu home was sold through auction and was purchased by Claes Nyberg and Carolyn McCarter, who own five properties in addition to their stake on Okumu’s property.
“I don’t have water. I don’t have heating. I need my habitability rights restored.”
Okumu now lives in his home with no heat or water. He has been living that way since December despite the cold and his ongoing disability. “And now we are in court. And I’m asking them, “What are you doing? You’re already illegally evicting me by shutting off the water and all that for almost four months, you shut off the water, you have shut off the heating.” Okumu said. “Were they hoping for me to freeze to death?”
Nyberg and McCarter hired eviction attorney Michael Perehinec to remove him from his family’s home. Perehinec also represented Habitat for Humanity during their deeply unpopular eviction of community member Kathy Majors, another immigrant who lost her house due to foreclosure during the pandemic. Eviction attorneys like Perehinec carry forward these suits week after week without regard for the lives they are upending.
Not only that, but Okumu even had Perehinec’s firm, Coughlin & Gerhart, as a retained legal counsel during his 2020 foreclosure case. Okumu produced email exchanges and a signed document showing that Coughlin & Gerhart had at least some commitment in representing him. Okumu says the firm failed to properly defend him during the foreclosure.
“The attorney-client confidentiality has been totally ripped apart by them,” he explained, referring to Coughlin & Gerhart. “They’re now going to represent my opponent to evict me from the same house that they were fighting the foreclosure of.”
“They were foreclosing on me when my wife was in the mortuary. And I was completely flattened, I was struggling for my life in Nairobi.”
This Tuesday, April 25th, Okumu will be brought to eviction court. However, he hopes to challenge the legality of the foreclosure decision. This challenge will be based on both Perehenic’s conflict of interest, as well as a statute of limitations argument for the foreclosure case itself, which could halt eviction proceedings. “They foreclosed seven years outside the statute of limitations,” explained Okumu. “The last time they should have foreclosed, if at all, was 2015.”
Previously, an eviction warrant that named Okumu’s children (but not Okumu himself) was thrown out after Cornell’s Tenant Legal Practicum helped Okumu.
This current eviction attempt will be Nyberg, McCarter, and Perehinec’s second attempt at obtaining a successful warrant on the property.
Notably, despite Okumu explaining that he was living without heat or water during the last eviction hearing, Judge Seth Peacock chose not to order the utilities be turned back on. Under NYS RPAPL 768, utility shut offs are considered to be illegal “self-help” evictions.
Okumu is searching for a foreclosure lawyer who would be willing to accept his case as soon as possible. “I want the foreclosure and auction to be vacated,” says Okumu, “Thrown out. And for my family to be compensated for the harassment we’ve experienced.”
Even when BlPOC, immigrant and disabled neighbors own their homes, the system is still stacked against them, and works to steal their housing stability and financial security. The predatory alliance between banks, attorneys and buyers to purchase properties for pennies on the dollar by unhousing indebted families facing struggles and crises must end immediately. Locally, this means that Claes Nyberg and Carolyn McCarter need to return Okumu’s family’s home!
Thank you to Stella Frank for initially bringing attention to this case in her April article, “Ithaca: The City Almost Everyone Can’t Wait to Leave,” which highlights the constant cost of living pressures poor and working class Ithacans experience while being inevitably pushed out of their homes.
