Lynn family in fight to save home

The Ouk Family at their 11 Rockaway Ave., Lynn home on Wednesday. Pictured clockwise from bottom left are Cynthia Chan, Serey Ouk, Chrean Ouk, Chivy Chum, Arryanna Chan and Chantrea Ouk. Item Photo / Reba M. Saldanha

Friday, October 22, 2010
By Jeff McMenemy
The Daily Item

LYNN - Serey Ouk will soon be the first member of her family to graduate from an American high school.

But while many students her age are focusing solely on their studies, Serey Ouk has also been at the center of her family's fight to stay in their rental home as banking giant Deutsche Bank - until they abruptly reached a tentative agreement this week to sell the property to a Boston non-profit - attempted to kick her family out.

Because her parents speak little English and her older sister's English is somewhat limited, she has been the family's chief translator and the person who has answered the "rude" phone calls at all hours of the day and the knocks on the door at night from strangers demanding they be out of their house in 24 hours.

"It's aggravating, it's really aggravating," she said, surrounded by three generations of family members in their neatly kept home on Rockaway Street.

The worst incident occurred when a stranger showed up one day and handed a summons to her 7-year-old niece, Arryana Chan.

"She wouldn't play outside after that," Ouk said. Even as it appears their fight to stay in their home might soon be over, Ouk remains perplexed about why the bank tried to evict them for about a year in the first place.

"I just feel like why are they doing this?" she said.

The Lynn English High School senior acknowledges the struggle has been stressful for both her family and her.

"They were pounding on the door or calling on the phone," she said. "I had to take the SATs and I didn't know if we were going to have to go somewhere else to live."

Her parents came to America from Cambodia to give their children the freedom they had lost in their native country, Ouk said.

"They came here from a refugee camp," she said. "They came here to live."

Translating for her father, Chrean Ouk, Serey Ouk said her family came to the United States for the same reason many immigrants do.

"So they could have their freedoms and their rights and their kids could have a good education," Serey Ouk said.

And the family also brought some of their homeland to America, creating an oasis of agriculture in the city's asphalt core.

Chrean Ouk proudly showed a visitor the numerous plants that surround their home, from beets to pear and peach trees, where you can grab fruit right off the branch. Chrean Ouk pointed to a series of buckets the family uses to collect rain water to use on the plants.

"The one (garden) he had at home when he was a child was bigger. It was acres," Serey Ouk said. "It reminds him of his farm in Cambodia."

Serey Ouk pointed to a plant with white flowers and said, "The more flowers on there the more money you're supposed to have. It's supposed to be a good luck plant."

The family also helped create the community garden at the Robert L. Ford School, where Chantrea Ouk's two daughters, Arryana Chan, 7, and Cynthia Chan, 5, attend. Chantrea Ouk, Serey's older sister who works full-time, has also been instrumental in keeping her family in the home that their brother used to own before he lost his job and was foreclosed on.

And the family - who has always paid the rent - was determined not to leave their home of five years and go back to the type of housing they used to live in.

"We used to live in an apartment," Serey Ouk said, shaking her head at the memory. "There was smoking and people partying and fighting and the cops would come. My mom has health issues, she has asthma. Here she can go outside whenever she wants and it's peaceful."

Serey Ouk said her family didn't want to leave their house because her nieces would have to leave the Ford School, which they love and she also attended. It would also have an impact on her parents.

"My parents have been kicked out of their country, it's not right for them to be kicked out of their home," she said.

Fortunately, about a year ago, the family started attending meetings of Lynn United for Change, a volunteer community organization dedicated to helping families stay in their homes, not only because it helps the families, but because it helps the city's neighborhoods.

"It provides a solution for the family who gets to stay in their home and the school system who doesn't have to deal with the situation of taking young kids out of one school and moving them to another," said Isaac Simon Hodes, a spokesman for the group. "And the neighborhood doesn't have to see a vacant house that got foreclosed on by the bank and is now empty and boarded up."

The organization has worked with the family throughout their struggle to keep the home and also helped connect them with Boston Community Capital, a branch of which ultimately reached the tentative deal to buy the house from Deutsche Bank.

"They helped us all along," Serey Ouk said about the group as she stood in her family's side yard.

Lynn United For Change also helped the family organize a vigil that was held Wednesday night.

More than 70 people attended the event.

But for the first time in more than a year, many family members hope they will have soon found a permanent home.

Patricia Hanratty, the president of the SUN (Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods) Initiative, a branch of Boston Community Capital, told The Daily Item late Wednesday that her organization had brokered a deal with Deutsche Bank to buy the Rockaway Street property.

"We're working on the paperwork now," she said.

Boston Community Capital takes money that they receive from private foundations or private individuals and then uses it to buy properties in urban neighborhoods - so far it's been mostly in Boston - and then gives low-interest mortgages to the tenants or homeowners who are going through a foreclosure.

"Both from the individual family level and the community level it's fundamental for all of us as human beings to have housing ... With this program, we're making sure we have a long-term, sustainable solution. It's not a short-term solution," Hanratty said.

"We evaluate the current residents to see if they have the capacity to support housing payments to buy or rent the house," Hanratty said.

The non-profit lender recently received a $5.5 million Wachovia Wells Fargo NEXT award so they can expand their efforts to reach more communities outside of Boston.

Pascale Desir, a staff attorney for Neighborhood Legal Services in Lynn, who represented Serey Ouk and her family, said their office has been "flooded with post foreclosure evictions."

The Legislature recently enacted a law that offers more protection for renters who have paid their rent even while their landlord lost their home to eviction, but Deutsche Bank's efforts to evict Serey Ouk and her family started before the new law took effect.

Attorney Lawson Williams of Chelmsford, who is representing Deutsche Bank, could not be reached for comment.

But in this case, Desir says the bank clearly has a family that was worth working with.

"They want to do what's right. This is very important in a city that's been ravaged by foreclosure to keep families in their homes," Desir said. "No one wants to live in a community where doors are covered with plywood."

That worry may be coming to an end for Serey Ouk and her family.

"I'm still nervous," she said when asked about the pending deal. "But I'm hopeful."

(Thor Jourgensen also contributed to this report)