As it turns out, I am not the only one who cares about animals. But even more importantly, someone in the servicing industry has taken steps to help our four-legged comrades.
Cheryl Lang, president of Integrated Mortgage Solutions (IMS), recently responded to my May 8 BLOG VIEW column with some information about a new nonprofit organization she formed.
Lang says her No Paws Left Behind Inc. organization attends to the ‘silent victims’ of foreclosure, noting that more than 1.25 million animals might be at risk in today's shaky housing environment.
‘Above and beyond the moral obligation to help a starving pet, abandoned animals can directly impact a lender's or servicer's assets,’ Lang remarks. ‘Pets that are left behind in homes can cause great damage to the property, thereby lowering the value of the home and making it unsafe for inspectors to secure, as well as difficult and costly to rehab.’
Although No Paws Left Behind was mainly conceived to raise awareness of pet abandonment and provide homeowners facing foreclosure with a resource for finding local animal shelters or other temporary housing, the organization is also trying to help servicers surmount legal issues.
‘In the majority of states and localities, pets and other animals are considered personal property and are subject to restrictive law,’ Lang says. ‘Servicers and loss mitigation specialists are limited in their ability to remove them from abandoned homes or provide care in other ways.’
As a response to these regulations, No Paws Left Behind has established a petition on its Web site that urges action to alter existing laws and, thus, enable servicing professionals to assist animals in need.
‘My goal in founding this organization is to reduce the number of abandoned family pets and also to encourage lenders and services to be good neighbors,’ Lang says.
For more information, call (281) 717-0054 or e-mail cheryl@nopawsleftbehind.org.
