Before the real estate bust, Rob Paxton and Susan Schneider might have met at a networking event or through their home-buyer clients. Instead, they first crossed paths at a day shelter for the homeless in Falls Church.
Schneider, once a mortgage broker with plenty of disposable income, arrived one cold winter morning with her possessions in tow, looking for a hot meal.
In the kitchen, Paxton stirred a bubbling pot on the stove. He once pulled in more than $200,000 a year in Northern Virginia, but he had taken the part-time job as the shelter’s director when his commissions dwindled to almost nothing….
Did Susan commit fraud in her work? Did she knowingly accept over valued estimates of property values? Did she knowingly make loans to people that did not have the means to repay them? Did she engage in “robo signing” or look the other way when others did so? Her job description seems to indicate that she was hip deep in the kind of criminal fraud that precipitated the housing bust and most of the current misery of the last 3 years. Maybe I am wrong.
Amen S&T. Larryt
Susan is now in the Hickory, NC area. There are other factors that continue to contribute to her homeless status. Some are beyond her control. Others are not.