After several years of efforts in the real estate market, acquiring and selling properties, in 2007 the marriage composed by Martha Melendez and Luis Blanco bought a house in Falcon street of the Montehiedra urbanization in San Juan in an auction held by Oriental Bank. The cost: $ 850,000 after paying a $ 250,000 draft.

At the time of moving to the large property, Martha was a housewife and then entered entrepreneurship, acquiring the franchise rights for 'Chargebox' in Puerto Rico - an automated stand to charge cell phones at a low cost. Luis worked as a salesman in a family business dedicated to making uniforms, Blanco and Riera Inc. His two sons attended a school.

Life for them passed without a worry until 2013, when Luis lost his job for reasons beyond his control. Anticipating difficulties to pay their mortgage, they went to the bank to get their bearings since they were aware of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which helps families in this type of situation.

'That appointment did not last 10 minutes and he (Oriental's representative) told us that we had to stop paying the house to qualify because if we showed that we could pay the house then we did not qualify,' said Martha who insisted to know if in fact that this was true, trusting in the person who was helping them. Today, she acknowledges that that was the moment when the Bank acted in bad faith, intentionally leading them directly to the foreclosure.

And indeed it was so three months later. They communicated by telephone and e-mail with the Bank to advise that the indicated time had elapsed and they wanted to enter into a loss mitigation process to qualify for HAMP. Already in the process of collecting the documents, they received a lawsuit for eviction by mail that they answered immediately, arguing that they were in the midst of a mediation process with Oriental Bank, so that legal action should not have proceeded.

A few months later, in November specifically, they received a letter by traditional mail informing that their mortgage had been transferred to the Operating Partners financiering firm. This took them by surprise because they were still in the process of delivering several documents to Oriental to receive the HAMP aid.

A communication made to Oriental's Loss Mitigation department to know what would happen now received a response stating that Operating Partners would continue the process they started, which was not true. However, the claim, which the marriage believed had been dismissed by this action, was still alive and now in the hands of this new institution.

That month they agreed to a meeting with Operating Partners to continue the Loss Mitigation process, but that meeting was not fruitful either, since they requested the same paperwork that they had delivered to Oriental. 'He gave us like tentative numbers that were not a big deal, they were not a big help. I think what they did was raise our percentage of interest, they raised us to 40 years and what they lowered us was to like $300 dollars monthly (of a mortgage of $4,700) ... And a few days later we received a notice of rebellion from the court,' Martha explained. The notice was because they had not attended a court hearing against Operating Partners for the execution of their property.

In 2014, anxiety seized this family, pressed by economic problems that flanked them from all fronts. Luis was looking for a job, while Martha's business faced problems with its business partners, in spite of its popularity.

There were times when they could not pay the power bill, which caused it to be cut off. One of their children faced health problems and had to be hospitalized; Soon after, Martha was also hospitalized for an anxiety disorder.

'Really the worst tension was after the events happened, so it was during and after that they got worse. As time went on the anxiety situation was getting worse ... We did not know how to pay for things, the school, the power was cut everytime. My son was taken out of school because we could not pay. A nun school,' Martha narrated. Meanwhile Luis got a job, but it did not generate enough to get them out of the ordeal they faced.

Meanwhile, the judicial process continued in the courts, with the legal defense of Martha and Luis filing motions to stop the foreclosure. Operating Partners argued in court that the marriage did not respond to several letters sent to them by mail on auction notices to their property. Martha and Luis assured that they did not receive these letters and those that were sent were delivered to the old place of employment of Luis, who did not forward them.

At the third auction, held at the end of 2015, the property was sold at 50% of its original price. At that time, Martha - who would not leave her house because of anxiety problems - was notified of eviction as her property was resold. She came to realize the multiple communications that never reached her and the two previous auctions when she checked the case file. On advice from her lawyer, she made an affidavit to indicate that she never received such communications, something that did not influence the decision of Judge Rebeca de León, who ruled in favor of the real estate company that acquired the property, TRM LLC.

To avoid losing property, the marriage filed bankruptcy to paralyze the claims process and tried to negotiate with TRM LLC to buy the property again, but they denied that possibility. The process continued in the courts for another year, receiving constant visits from a moving truck and a bailiff who they confronted with documents from the court that the foreclosure could not proceed until the plaintiff answered those motions filed by his lawyer.

But they could only sustain themselves like this for so long, until November 2016, when Operating Partners and TRM LLC sent a letter to the trustee who handled their bankruptcy case to authorize the foreclosure. In December of that year they were notified for the last time that they had to leave the property before the 20th of December. The lawyer representing the couple urged the court to postpone the deadline because they were in the middle of the holiday celebration and a move with so little time to meet would be difficult.

January 27 was set as the deadline, and by that time Martha and Luis packed their belongings in a warehouse and exiled themselves to Falcon street in Montehiedra. Today, the family lives in the house of Martha's parents in Guaynabo, where we talked with them for the second time about the ordeal they went through in those four years.

Luis now enjoys a better job in sales with opportunity for growth, although he does not earn the same amount as before. While Martha, whose business remains active on a smaller scale, says she is in the process of reinventing herself, a difficult task considering the little time elapsed between abandoning her home and this interview. The marriage's credit score was also devastated during the contentious process.

Even so, having lost their dream home after years of work and confidence in banking institutions is incredible for Martha. 'It's rough that I gave 250 thousand dollars, that I paid that house for so many years and that I have nothing. It's rough. I could have bought a house in cash with that. When will I have my own house, God only knows,' she concluded.

Yolanda: Exiled amidst mourning the death of her husband

'By my spirit I've persisted because this is to be interned in Capestrano. Everyone always works to have their house; we know that things can happen. But not to that extent'.

With these words, Yolanda Vargas, a sixty year old widow who lives with her friend today, described the hard and intense experience of losing her home due to the negativity of the mortgage provider to assist her with federal support programs to which she could qualify. In fact, her foreclosure came amidst the death of her husband, who died of Alzheimer.

Yolanda lived in a house in the Plaza de las Fuentes housing complex in Toa Alta, which in 2000 she bought at $190,000. In 2003 she received a mortgage from Banco Santander with a monthly plan of $1,800. At the time, she was a proprietor of a press located in the Santa Rosa sector in Bayamón, business which she had opened in 1989 – 'after Hurricane Hugo came through', she narrated.

Her business enjoyed great sponsorship in the first decade of service, but with the arrival of the new millennium, her clientele began to wane, on hand with her revenue at the press. After 21 years of operating, in 2011, she closed her business, a year later, her husband fell ill.

It was in that moment when Yolanda began failing to pay her mortgage. Conscious of the situation, she went to Santander's Department of Loss Mitigations, where she managed to qualify for the process and reduce her monthly payment to $1200, an amount which was still high considering her circumstances.

Two years later, her husband's condition worsened and without any remedy to avoid his death, he perished. In 2013, the term of her loss mitigations was had concluded, and the functionaries who helped her in the beginning of the process gave her only one option to keep her house, pay the principal and the interests she owed.

Yolanda insisted about the availability of federal aids promoted by the then president Barack Obama, to which she explained that the bank representatives indicated that those aids did not apply to them. 'What does one do in that case? Nothing, I had to leave my house,' she said insisting that the bank representatives never counseled her on HAMP. On the first notification she received from the Court to abandon her house, still mourning the loss of her husband, Yolanda acquiesced to leave her home.

Nervous, unemployed and desperate, she received help from her friends to move to the house of the one she now lives with. 'It was a big humiliation from the bank. I told them ‘look at my trajectory, I always paid, I never failed, help me' they didn't', she exclaimed.

At her 60 years, Yolanda now returned to a job market to look for employment to pitch in for the daily happenings of her friend's house. However, this also proved a difficult task seeing as how the only available jobs were in fast food restaurants.

Even though Yolanda was born and had lived for the most part of her life in the United States before establishing herself in Puerto Rico – and recognizing the hardships of living on the island – she let it be known that she had no intention of returning.

'I don't want to leave Puerto Rico. I like it here, I wasn't born here but I love the island. I love that it is always Summer. I lived in New York in the United States with so much cold. Even though people speak badly of Puerto Rico, I'll stay here, I'll die here, I'll be buried here', she assured us.

Mercedes: A matter of weeks before the first auction of her apartment

The closing of Doral Bank left in the air hundreds of cases of loss mitigation and mediation, while they transferred their mortgage cases to other financial institutions. In the case of Mercedes Vega, the mortgage she obtained with Doral for an apartment in Isla Verde was transferred to a Wells Fargo subsidiary that Banco Popular administers on the Island, as she explained.

In her case, an open heart surgery and a kidney transplant to her son in 2013 provoked her to have difficulties paying a monthly plan of $1,000 on her mortgage. In that course, she applied for an FHA federal emergency loan, to help with the payment of the apartment for two years.

The end of this term coincided with the closing of operations of Doral, moments where Mercedes sought additional aids from the bank in order to continue with the payment of her mortgage. When the transfer of her mortgage to Wells Fargo was finished, she went to Banco Popular to seek a loss mitigation process which was denied.

'They told me they couldn't do anything. That the bank couldn't do anything because the subsidiary that bought my case did not permit them any type of modifications that wasn't the payment of the debt and the month as it was. Without lowering a single cent nor any other thing,' Mercedes explained.

She hasn't had any success in Court with the judges either, who have ruled in favor of the bank frequently, making her pay the mortgage or expose herself to consequences. Without any other remedy, Mercedes has braced herself for the latter.

According to what she told us, she has already received notification of an auction for her apartment, scheduled for the next June 12. 'I'm going to keep fighting this battle until the last moment because, look, I'm 69 years old, 70 this year, and I can tell you 32 in this place. I have to start looking for a place to stay, to dismantle my house. And well, I am so furious and its so many things with this issue because I have felt abused with all those people and that there's no one to help,' she indicated she has no resources to cover the cost of lawyers to represent her before the banks, so she faces them alone in Court.