People in Business: UP CLOSE / WILLIAM J. BRENNAN JR., Director, Home Defense Program, the Atlanta Legal Aid Society
1/22/2008
Source: By Tammy Joyner, The Atlanta-Constitution

True to a calling, lawyer and civil rights stalwart fights to save the financially fragile from powerful lenders.

A bookcase in attorney Bill Brennan's downtown Decatur office is lined with binders full of phone messages and notes from daily client meetings stretching back years. There's also an extensive collection of "At A Glance" calendars.

"I keep all my calendars," said Brennan, who heads the Home Defense program at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. "I can tell you what I was doing 20 years ago."

This is a man who takes his work seriously. In his 40 years practicing law, he's built a reputation as a expert on predatory lending, a champion of the financially hard-hit and a pain-in-the-side of the banking industry. He brushes aside criticism as part of the job.

Many of his Emory University Law School peers have gone on to silk-stocking firms. Brennan is happy working out of a modest office and staying true to the calling he answered in the summer of 1968 to help the poor and powerless.

Q. You entered law at a real tumultuous, yet exciting time in American history —- the civil rights movement, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. What's it been like?

A. It's been a great 40 years. Back then, you had a lot of idealistic lawyers coming out of law school. In the early days, we focused on welfare and housing rights and consumer cases. One of the first things I was involved in was the Bolton Gardens rent strike [in Atlanta]. It was remarkable. There were 65, 70 families going up against a wealthy landlord who was a prominent insurance man. We lost our court case but entered into a settlement that allowed the tenants to stay in their homes. That was my entry into housing and consumer cases and I've done a lot of them through the years.

Q. Who are your clients now?

A. They tend to be almost all African-Americans, Hispanics and women. They're mostly low- to moderate-income, retirees and elderly on fixed income and long-term homeowners who've been refinanced. Most of our experience is [with people having trouble] refinancing, not home purchases.

Q. Last year ended pretty badly for many homeowners. What's your take on how the housing situation will unfold this year?

A. With this incredible saturation of these types of abusive mortgages we're seeing now, the fallout's going to continue. There's going to be more foreclosures in '08. On top of that, we have these adjustable-rate mortgages that are getting ready to reset in '08. Monthly payments on these loans that reset will go up dramatically, which will drive more people into foreclosure. We're waiting for that to fully unfold.

Q. Your unit at the agency has decided to focus on helping senior citizens save their homes through an unusual approach. Explain.

A. A large part of our intakes have been senior citizens who are heavily targeted by companies marketing these unaffordable loans. In virtually all of the cases, the seniors were made high-balance loans at a time when they were living on limited Social Security and other retirement income. It occurred to us that although reverse mortgages were meant to enhance seniors' ability to live in their homes longer by giving them access to their equity, we thought it could be used to help seniors facing foreclosure because of these unaffordable loans. We've learned an awful lot in the process and made some pathways into certain [lending] companies.

Q. What needs to be done to address the overall problem?

A. The plans proposed by the Bush administration are tailored to apply only to a small group of homeowners. The restrictions are so great few are eligible. So that makes it even more imperative that we come up with a much broader and fairer solution. There should be a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures because the subprime lenders made millions of loans to borrowers who they knew couldn't afford the payments. This would give us time to sort out the problem and find ways to save many more homes. While we're talking, people are losing their homes.

For non-seniors who can afford to make mortgage payments but not under the current terms of their loans, lenders and servicers should restructure the loans by lowering their balance, interest rates and monthly payment to affordable levels. The interest and payments should be fixed for the balance of the loan terms.

Q. What about the people who got standard mortgages at fixed rates? Aren't they being punished for having done things right?

A. Absolutely not. The mortgage companies made the decision at the highest levels to market these loans that are resulting in these high levels of foreclosures. They could have made affordable fixed-rate loans to everybody. Your question implies the people [with exotic loans] did something wrong. My experience shows most people don't understand mortgage loans. They're not sophisticated. They've been misled. To say they're getting some kind of special breaks is nonsense. Look to the mortgage companies. They're responsible for the fallout. They're responsible for the harm to the communities. If the mortgage industry had self-regulated and decided not to make loans to people who couldn't afford them, none of this would have happened.

Q. Have you ever been tempted to go to the other side?

A. No. I couldn't see myself helping a corporate giant get richer. I'm a product of the '60s.

THE BILL BRENNAN FILE

Age: 64

Residence: Peachtree Hills in Atlanta.

Family: wife Lynn Dianne Simmons, a French teacher at Grady High School, and son Aaron Simmons, 32, who is in the graduate teaching program at Georgia State University.

Education: Bachelor of Arts from Emory University, 1965. Law degree from Emory Law School, 1967.

Career path: Joined Atlanta Legal Aid Society in August 1968. Became director of the agency's Home Defense program 18 years ago.

What you might not know: He studied to become a Catholic priest when he was in high school, going as far as entering the seminary. He left after a few years because, he said, "It seemed the whole world was going by and I was missing it, especially the civil rights movement. Plus, I wasn't interested in the celibate life and other restrictions."

Hobbies: "My wife and I are learning to sail."

What he would be doing if he weren't in his current job: "I'd want to be in some kind of social movement trying to change things. I really believed in what the civil rights movement was all about. Also, I'd love to teach high school students about predatory lending and how it could ruin their lives."