But Amherst graduate Joshua Zinner '87 is providing hope for people affected by predatory lending as the director of the South Brooklyn Legal Services Foreclosure Prevention Project. For his work on the project, Zinner recieved the Denison Ray Award from the New York State Bar Association. Committed to social justice and public service, Zinner uses compassion and legal skills to save houses and people.
A love of learning
Long before he was fighting large mortgage companies in court on a regular basis, Zinner was a college student figuring out what he wanted to do in the world. "Coming out of high school, I wasn't really thinking about social issues and politics," he said.
A political science major, Zinner wrote his thesis on instructive engagement, "a Reagan policy that related to South Africa and its colonies." A devoted student of former Mount Holyoke College professor (and National Security Advisor to Clinton) Anthony Lake, Zinner cited his classes taken with Lake as the beginning of his interest in world politics. "During my courses with Professor Lake, my interest in social issues blossomed and I became more interested in what was going on in the world," he said.
Zinner also points to another Amherst professor as having a strong impact on his life. "I have very fond memories of taking a Russian Literature class with Professor [of Russian] Stanley Rabinowitz," he said. "Russian Literature has little to do with what I am spending my life on now, but I am most grateful to him for really teaching me to love learning and thinking."
Zinner's current devotion to fighting injustice began to show in some of his extracurricular activities at Amherst. He worked in a North Amherst store that collected furniture and clothes for low-income people and started a South African coalition that raised money for a school in Tanzania for South African refugees. His work at Amherst helped to solidify his goals for life after college. "By the time I left Amherst, I was geared up to devote my work to [social] issues," he said.
Zinner found his time at Amherst to be rewarding in every way. "[Those were] some of the most stimulating years of my life," said Zinner. "I developed a hunger for knowledge and a desire to learn how to think intellectually. I made amazing friendships at Amherst, too. I found kindred spirits. Now, almost 20 years after we were freshmen together, we still sit around and talk politics," he said.
A social vision
After graduating from Amherst, Zinner spent the next decade working in a variety of public service jobs around the world. "Coming out of college, I did a lot of social work and got most of my training on the job," he said.
Working first in a program for adjudicated kids in his hometown of Washington, D.C., Zinner said that his work was comprehensive and all-reaching. In a program for first-time offenders, which was offered as an alternative to lockdown, he counseled the kids, placed them in homes, made sure they were getting a solid education and kept track of how they were doing.
Zinner points to this job as his first real entry into the real world. "That job sort of toughened me up, made me wiser to the world," he said. "I went there as a naive, idealist kid. And, maybe I'm still idealistic, but it made me a lot more aware of socioeconomic issues and social dynamics and dealing with people. It taught me how to do solid work without letting my idealism interfere."
From Washington, D.C., Zinner traveled to Guatemala and spent a year and a half working with a team of three other Americans doing outreach to street children. He described the political situation as "extremely violent. As a result, these kids were targeted and put in the middle of volatile situations." Zinner documented the human rights abuses that he observed. Using the street as his classroom, he also taught classes and arranged apprenticeships for some of the older kids. In Guatemala, Zinner also learned how to speak Spanish, an extremely useful tool for his current work.
Continuing to add to his experience in community based jobs, Zinner took a job as a counselor at a homeless shelter in Boston. In the shelter, he ran a job program for people who were re-entering the work force after drug and alcohol problems.
After leaving the shelter, he spent the next six months working as the Outreach Coordinator for a legal service in Alabama devoted to migrant worker's rights. "I would travel around to the different migrant camps and educate people about their rights and resources," Zinner said. He also compiled a report during this time documenting abuses that he witnessed.
"Coming out of [those jobs], I felt an even stronger commitment to doing public interest work and work that had social context and social value," Zinner said. And so, after his time in Alabama, Zinner decided that he could honor his social work commitment best by going to law school.
"I felt powerless working towards large, systematic change while working in a shelter and so I decided to become an attorney with a strong commitment to do socially oriented work." Graduating in 1993 from the University of Michigan, he had spent his law school years doing legal services, working for prisoners' rights and continuing his commitment to migrant farm workers.
Attorney action
Zinner's first job out of law school was representing low-income Spanish-speaking tenants who were being evicted by loan and mortgage brokers. When the director of litigation at the South Brooklyn Legal Services, Raun Rasmuffen '77, decided to start a program combating these evictions, he turned to Zinner to head it up.
Opened in 1998, the Foreclosure Prevention Project is a four-person project that is completely grant funded. The program represents low-income homeowners who are being evicted. "There are mortgage companies targeting low income homeowners-99 percent of whom are either African-American or Latino-or high-cost loans," Zinner explained. "They then put these people into debt by draining their equities, and then when they can't pay, their house is taken away." The mortgage companies often buy back the houses and sell it at market price.
"These lenders often go door-to-door and aggressively solicit buyers who might not be financially sophisticated or are cash poor," Zinner said. "Then, when the homeowners get caught up in the unaffordable loans, they are evicted." He explains that these mortgage companies often operate their business on a two-tiered credit system: one for caucasian communities and one for non-caucasian communities.
"The non-white communities are being targeted for high cost loans," said Zinner.
Zinner's mission is to stop these disclosures. He does this most often by suing the mortgage companies in federal court. He builds his legal defenses on the grounds of a violation of consumer protection laws or of a violation of civil rights laws or fraud. Often the lenders or mortgage companies are bought out by larger national banks, forcing Zinner to go against huge operations with large resources.
As a legal services organization, however, Zinner does more than just go after the lenders. "We do a lot of education outreach to citizens and train lawyers and community groups," Zinner said. The project has a hotline that receives hundreds of calls a year. He also works in coalition with groups that work to make legislators more responsive to the problem. "We go at this issue from a lot of different perspectives," he said.
Thus far, the Foreclosure Prevention Project has been extremely successful. "We aggressively go after lenders and haven't had anyone leave their homes," Zinner said. "We work hard to settle cases and work out arrangements so our clients are secure in their rightful houses."
Zinner has been recognized and honored for his work by the New York State Bar Association. In 2001, he was awarded the Denison Ray Award that is given to attorneys who have provided outstanding services for low-income clients. For Zinner, the award was a nice gesture. "We work really hard in our project," he said. "It's nice to get recognition."
But it is clear that Zinner is not doing this work for the money or awards. "Most days I definitely feel like it's worth it," he said. "It's nice to throw yourself into a job where you're fighting for issues that you really believe in."
Zinner acknowledged the hardships, but continually pointed to the worthwhile parts of his work. "It's certainly overwhelming because we're fighting a battle with a serious lack of resources," he said. "But, at the same time, it's gratifying work. I feel passion and believe in what I do and there is a value to that."