Like scores – actually, thousands would be a more accurate figure – of other Bajan women in New York City, Sybil is a remarkable person.
The mother of young adult children, she has been the lynchpin, the centre of gravity of the family for years.
That’s because she was the person who first decided to emigrate. The office worker came to New York, secured the family’s first job, rented an apartment and furnished it, steps that made life easier for her husband and the others when they joined her 18 months later.
“You know you have to do what you have to do,” was the way she put it in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.
That was almost 20 years ago. Now she is facing another family challenge. Just when it appeared that it was smooth sailing, the financial crisis struck, making the employment situation nightmarish and sending the housing industry into a tailspin.
“Most of us never saw it coming,” Sybil explained.
The current nightmare the Bajan family is facing can be summarised in a single word: foreclosure.
“We didn’t believe it would come to this,” she asserted.
What makes her situation so unusual is that she is prepared to talk about it. Most Barbadians hide it from their relatives back home and their friends and neighbours in the city.
“If the worst comes to the worst, then we can rent,” she said with fierce  determination.

Bad job market

What has catapulted her to the brink of possibly losing her property is the “lousy” job market, which has caused her take-home pay and that of her husband to shrink dramatically in the past 18 months. In her case, the elimination of overtime has sent her average monthly pay tumbling by 25 per cent while her husband was forced to change jobs and is now getting about 40 per cent less than, say, in 2008.
“I try to pay the mortgage, but once or twice we fell behind but managed to scrape up enough to save the roof over our heads,” she said. “It’s that tough.”
So, while she isn’t in danger of being forced out of her “dream” house today, things would be much better if the bank which holds the mortgage would agree to renegotiate it.
“They keep asking for all kinds of documentation and when you provide it, they demand something else,” she complained. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on. It’s disheartening and frightening.”
Her story has an eerie ring of familiarity to it. That’s because thousands of New Yorkers, especially West Indian immigrants, are in the identical position, so much so that a coalition of elected city officials, labour union leaders, members of the clergy and community activists are demanding action from the large commercial banks which are dragging their feet on doing exactly what Sybil is asking: change the terms of the mortgages so that property owners can retain their homes.

Red tape a problem

“Unresponsive staff, misinformation and repeated requests for paperwork – the red tape and bureaucracy New Yorkers often cite as they struggle to save their homes – are symptoms of a system that lacks incentives for banks to take action and find solutions,” complained John Liu, New York City’s Comptroller, the chief fiscal watchdog. “It’s time to engage in identifying the best practices and solutions.”
John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union, had a similar complaint.
“There is no justifiable reason why phone calls should go unanswered or paperwork has to be re-sent repeatedly,” he insisted.
The housing foreclosure crisis is severe. Property owners in West Indian immigrant communities in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx are particularly hard hit. From Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Canarsie to South Jamaica, the Rockaways and the South Bronx, for instance, West Indians are crying out. In the first quarter of the year, foreclosures jumped by 16 per cent in the five boroughs and they are rising.
It’s going to be  interesting to see how some of the nations largest banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, HSBC and Bank of America respond to the September 1 deadline set by the coalition for them to indicate how they plan to deal with the foreclosure crisis, more specifically, how they intend to improve their customer service.
In a letter to the banks’ chief executives, Liu, Samuelsen, the Reverend Herbert Daughtry, a prominent church leader and civil rights advocate and others said it was clear that the financial services industry wasn’t doing enough to save people’s homes from foreclosure.
“Banks like yours can do more,” they stated. “When the interests of the lenders and borrowers are not properly aligned, there is a lack of incentives to take action, leading to a climate of inferior customer service.”
That’s precisely what Sybil and hundreds of Bajans and other West Indians are complaining about across New York City.