Protestors Want Moratorium on Foreclosures in Ohio County

An Ohio man facing eviction from his foreclosed home has gone to extreme lengths to call attention to his plight and that of other homeowners in distress. A few days ago Keith Sadler and five activist friends locked themselves inside his Toledo-area home and are refusing to leave until a moratorium on foreclosures is declared in Wood County, Ohio. "We tried working all these avenues, and we feel like the system is geared toward the banks and not the people, so we felt we needed to take matters into our own hands," Sadler told American Banker. "The only other option for them is to come in and drag us out." Sadler's two-bedroom, one-bath home in Stony Ridge, which is just outside Toledo, was sold to the owner of the mortgage, State Bank and Trust Co., in a January sheriff's sale for $33,333, according to the Wood County sheriff's office. Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn said he has a court order to hand the house over to the bank, a subsidiary of $653 million-asset Rurban Financial Corp. of Defiance, Ohio. Wasylyshyn said he plans to execute the order but would not say when. Wasylyshyn said he gave Sadler plenty of time to move out and that he had agreed to leave the property by midnight Sunday. "I'm just disappointed in him that he gave me his word that he was going to move out and he didn't," the sheriff said. If Sadler leaves the property without incident, he will not be arrested. However, if he refuses to leave, he will face arrest, the sheriff said. Sadler, a co-founder of the Toledo Foreclosure Defense League, said he and the others in the house are prepared to stay for as long as is necessary.