BALTIMORE -- Fannie Mae has forgiven the mortgage of a 90-year-old Ohio woman who shot herself as she was about to be evicted from her foreclosed home.
Addie Polk's plight became national knowledge when Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) told Capitol Hill lawmakers about the widow earlier this month as he voted against the $700 billion financial bailout proposal.
Polk and her husband purchased the home in 1970 for $10,000, according to The Akron Beacon Journal. It was paid off in 1982. Polk refinanced several times starting in 1997 and ending with a 30-year mortgage in 2004 for $45,620 from a subprime lender, the newspaper reported. Fannie Mae assumed the loan in 2007.
A Fannie Mae spokesman said that, given the circumstances, dismissing the mortgage was appropriate.
AARP recently concluded a study that found that over 25% of mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures involve seniors and that older homeowners with subprime mortgages are 17 times more likely to end up in foreclosure than their peers with prime mortgages.
