Yennifer Olortiga's American dream of homeownership turned into a foreclosure nightmare when she tried to modify her mortgage two years ago.
The Staten Island mom told The Post that she had been paying her Bank of America mortgage for six years but now finds herself, her husband and three kids close to getting booted out onto the street because of BofA's bungled loan-modification process.
"This is the American dream to own a home, and now we don't even know how much longer we'll be able to live in it," Olortiga said.
The mother of three teenagers — ages 19, 17 and 14 — says that since she applied for a loan modification on her $225,000 house back in 2011, the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank has either ignored her pleas for aid entirely or given her the runaround.
Chad Rachman/New York Post
A heartbreaking story of homeowner Joyce Harden—seen here choking up yesterday at the news conference — served as an example of the state's accusations against lenders Wells Fargo and Bank of America.
The bank has misplaced paperwork, delayed its response to the family's application and asked multiple times for the same documentation, Olortiga claims.
"We can't sleep at night," she added.
"We've resubmitted documents five times since last year," the family's lawyer said. "Within 30 days a decision should be made, but for [them] it's taken more than 15 months, and we still don't have an answer," Joseph Sant, with SI Legal Services, said.
Tales of banks bungling mortgage-modification paperwork were common in the years after the 2008 mortgage meltdown but were thought to have been erased last year when the five largest US mortgage lenders, in return for 49 states dropping lawsuits on the matter, promised to follow through quickly on modification requests.
New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman yesterday promised to sue BofA and a second bank, Wells Fargo, for failing to live up to their promise.
"We've been paying our mortgage for over six years, and it's not fair the bank would rather take it away than help us," Olortiga noted.
The family represents thousands of New Yorkers on the brink of getting bounced from their homes despite the $25 billion, 49-state settlement last year.
"Every day in America, more than 2,700 new families enter into some form of foreclosure," the AG noted.
Retired nurse Joyce Harden, 69, who lives in the Rockaways with her husband, Alton, is facing similar problems getting a modification.
Harden says she refinanced her roughly $360,000 mortgage in 2008 but has seen the value of her home plummet to an estimated $220,000 after it was damaged during Hurricane Sandy.
With a tissue in her hand and sniffling at times, Harden said that while she's still on time with her payments on the home in which she raised her family for 35 years, she fears losing it.
"We know that every month that passes we are getting deeper and deeper in a hole," she noted.
"We are headed into our 70s and want to enjoy this part of our lives without worrying about losing our homes," Harden added.
mark.decambre@nypost.com
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