January housing auction canceled
Harris foreclosures delayed for 9th month, giving owners a respite
Harris County’s scheduled foreclosure auction Tuesday has been canceled by executive order, shutting down the facility where those auctions are held and providing relief to struggling homeowners.
The cancellation of the auction marks the ninth month foreclosures have been postponed in the county since the COVID outbreak. Citing health concerns, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo has shutdown the Bayou City Event Center on the first Tuesday of the month — the day foreclosure auctions must be held under state law — every month since April, with the exception of June.
“The county remains in a very dangerous situation, and the virus continues to surge,” said Hidalgo’s spokesperson, Rafael Lemaitre, in an email. He noted that Harris County’s COVID positivity rate has surpassed 14 percent and that hospitalizations for disease continue to increase. “We have to continue to press forward on restricting gatherings until it is safe to doso— we owe it to our community to keep at this.”
While Hidalgo and her team pointed to warnings against large gatherings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as reason for canceling the auction, federal agencies have taken steps to mitigate foreclosures they said are motivated by the need to aid homeowners who have lost work to the pandemic.
Government agencies that back mortgages have extended the period that those mortgages will be protected from foreclosure. Mark Calabria, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees government-sponsored mortgage-finance companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, said ithat its suspension of foreclosures would keep “borrowers safe during the pandemic.”
The federal government has only extended protections to governmentbacked mortgages, which make up roughly two-thirds of home mortgag------
es. Hidalgo’s order covers the remaining homes, as well as commercial properties, which are not protected by the CARES Act.
“I applaud Harris County’s efforts, and I’m glad to see the Commissioner’s Court creatively use the authority granted to them by the governor’s office to help ensure no one loses their home due to the economic impacts of COVID-19,” said Amir Befroui, an attorney who is working to protect homeowners from foreclosure through the local nonprofit Lone Star Legal Aid.