Between 2017-2020, during hurricanes, earthquakes and a pandemic, 12,800 homes were foreclosed in Puerto Rico. We provide education, support and legal empowerment tools to families unable to pay their mortgages in Puerto Rico. "Derecho a tu casa" has been working for 6 years to provide free legal ed workshops, know your right toolkits, legal helplines, and advocacy toolkits to empower particularly women and elders at risk of foreclosures.
Disasters highlight housing insecurity. Hurricanes, earthquakes and pandemic amplify a foreclosure crisis. 12,800 homes have been foreclosed. Around 1/5 families are behind their mortgage payments and at risk of foreclosure. Debtors do not know their rights and lack legal representation, placing elders and domestic violence survivors at special risk. There is a need for legal empowerment projects focused on the right to housing of these people.
We will empower 200 families by providing them educational materials, direct legal support through free workshops, hotline, and chats. We will strengthen advocacy capacity among participants, train and empower 100 elders and survivors through legal education of their rights as consumers, adopt legal selfdefense and advocacy strategies to ask banks to adopt practices which protect debtors' rights. Participants will be encouraged to replicate the workshops in their communities.
We will develop an information hub and legal empowerment anti-foreclosure initiative, tailored for women and elders. At the end of 2022, we envision that at least 300 families at risk of foreclosure will have received support and become advocates able to defend the right to housing and demand financial institutions accountability and best practices.
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