He promised his wife he'd keep the house. Then he took out a reverse mortgage. [View all]

[Zorro]

By Steve Lopez

There is nothing grand about the white one-story house in the middle of Roxbury Drive in San Bernardino, particularly in its current state of disrepair.

But to Juan Gutierrez, that house is home. As a young man he worked in construction, saved up for a down payment and, in 1968, bought the three-bedroom house where he and his wife raised their three children.

And then, in 2014, he was evicted as part of a dispute with his reverse mortgage lender that continues to this day. It’s a kind of dispute that could become more common in coming months, as COVID-19 pushes more seniors to the brink of financial disaster, prompting some to resort to reverse mortgages even as others default on them.

So deep is Gutierrez’s pain over the loss of his house that on some days he travels from his nearby apartment to Roxbury Drive just to sit outside the abandoned, vacant house. He watches the comings and goings on the street, imagining himself back home.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-19/column-he-lost-his-house-in-reverse-mortgage-dispute-but-years-later-keeps-fighting-back

Lopez is an outstanding LA Times reporter, and this article highlights some of the gotchas with reverse mortgages that a lot of seniors probably didn't understand when signing up for one.