Predatory lending decimated communities throughout the United States and was an enormous factor in setting off the global recession that began in 2008. The orchestrated selling and bundling of bad mortgages by the lending industry and Wall Street to unsuspecting borrowers such as Cleveland resident Barbara Anderson forced her to hide in shame.

She was receiving additional mortgage fees despite making her payments so she discreetly searched for ways to keep her family’s home until she found a small Cleveland-based community action group, Empowering and Strengthening Ohio’s People (ESOP), previously known for helping create school guard crossings. Barbara was hired by ESOP, and they formed a powerful alliance that, over the course of the last five years, has saved more then 16,000 homes.

Years before the “Occupy” movement, ESOP used controversial tactics that were highly effective in bringing banks and loan sharks to the table to renegotiate bad loans. Using three-inch plastic toy blue sharks, which ESOP purchased by the thousands, victims of predatory loans and ESOP employees deposited the sharks at the homes, offices and clubs of lenders and bankers. The hope was to humiliate them to the table. It was odd, but it worked.

Inside ESOP, the compelling story of how the organization went from a small community action group to a state movement that saved thousands of homes.

In 2007, Richard Cordray, the newly elected Ohio Treasurer, walked into the small ESOP office and backed the organization to receive funding and go statewide, effectively transforming a small non-profit “dot-org” into a multi-million dollar operation to help fend off the impending economic demise of Cleveland and much of Ohio. Despite its successes, the city and the state continue to face an uncertain future as the crisis had already impacted a huge percentage of inner city homes. And after ten years of fraudulent practices, predatory lenders moved to the suburbs.

Trapped in a predatory loan, Barbara Anderson relates the shame of being caught up in a bad mortgage.

Today ESOP is a major player in Ohio’s survival. Although the predatory lending has stopped, widespread and persistent unemployment still takes homes away from their owners and much of Cleveland’s inner city housing is boarded-up, vandalized, or has been torn down by the city.

Barbara currently remains affiliated with ESOP but also continues her advocacy, organizing a community center in her own neighborhood, Slavic Village. She is also a member of a church group and a street club that addresses mounting neighborhood issues related to the depopulation of Cleveland including the diminishing education system and violent crime.

On January 4, 2012 Richard Cordray was appointed by the Obama administration as the director of the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by Elizabeth Warren.

What happened within inner city Cleveland is a microcosm of what has taken place throughout the country over the past ten years. The difference is that having an organization like ESOP for support and information set Cleveland apart from other cities or states such as Florida where those trapped in a predatory loan have had little or no place to turn within the chaos.

PHOTOGRAPHS and TEXT by Anthony Suau

Original musical score by Curtis Lundy

With support from Leica Camera