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Homepage > Local News > 12 News Investigates
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Foreclosure Detectives Clear Out Local Homes

After Multiple Warnings, Detectives Come To Clean House

It happens every day in the Milwaukee area; homes are foreclosed and families have to move out and cannot come back.

Foreclosed families eventually get a final warning from the bank, but they have to move, and by law, the sheriff moves in with legal muscle and a moving truck. It's a day detectives don't look forward to.

"The deputies do this every day, and I think it probably is very hard for them," Tom Brittain, an on-site mover said.

When detectives arrive at a home they have to evict, they discovered Darlene Williams, her newborn baby, her 4-year-old son, and Williams' younger brother inside the nearly empty foreclosed home. The home once belonged to Williams' mother but it's time for them to leave.

"The man came down here, at first, he said be out by the 14th. I talked to him and then he never came," Williams said. "I don't know. I should have left back then. I just didn't have no where to go, at first, so now I've got somewhere to go. So I'm cool now."

Williams said her family was told to be out four days ago. Now she and the kids will wait at a neighbor's for a ride, and a new home. For the detectives, it's time to move on to the next home.

The next home the detectives come to is a bug infested, vacant home. In the back, there is a discarded car, mattresses, furniture, toys, bags of clothing, rotting food and a rat.

"Like in this case, we had to breach the door, so send someone over to resecure the door, change the locks and then this way, if they're caught back on the premises, they can just call the city coppers and they can be arrested," Dective Donald Desotell said.

For Trolando Wright, it's one of the toughest days of his life. He is being forced out of his boyhood home, his parent's home, and after 40 years, his parents are being forced out.

"My mom's out now wandering the street. It got to try to find her and get her into assisted living. My dad's over with one of my sisters. But they're 72 and 82-years-old." Wright said.

Wright said his mom and dad paid off the mortgage in 1994. She worked as a teacher's aide; he at a foundry. Then his mom borrowed against the equity using a rising, adjustable rate mortgage they eventually couldn't afford.

"Got 'em stuck up where the mortgage went to $1,100 and they're on a fixed income," Wright said.

The detectives said families who end up being forced out have been given several months notice and a final warning about a month before they show up with a moving truck.

"You'd like to move the way you want to move, as opposed to an eviction move, where we're just out, out, out OK now we've got to go," Desotell said.

"It hurt my father because he thought, you know, if he was going to die anywhere it would be here in the house he worked and paid for," Wright said.

Brittain was the mover assigned to follow the sheriff's detectives around never knowing what they'll find left behind.

"I've seen more of it and I've seen it hitting I think middle class people more. People who never expect that they were going to go through this," Brittain said.

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