Council announces interest reversal for victims

In a move that the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) is hoping will repair relationships with victims of the 2018 housing scandal that defrauded several community members, a maximum of $950,000 is being set aside to reverse interest charges to 41 mortgage clients and five Home Repair Loan clients.

“This was really meant just to do a reversal of the interest from the time that it was discovered until now. Those people who were victims will be brought back to where they should have been in 2018, and if they had continued to make payments, they will be in a better spot than where they were,” said Alan John Rice, the MCK’s executive operations officer.

“It was all part of our three-year plan for restructuring of the Housing Unit, building the trust within the community,” said council chief Ryan Montour, the lead on the housing portfolio.

Meetings have been taking place with people who have come forward involving Rice, Montour, council chief Jeremiah Johnson, and the staff at credit management for the MCK.

“We run everybody’s numbers, and we show them exactly where they are in their mortgage loan, and we’re able to talk to them and listen to know what had happened after that, how they felt, and then looking at and seeing how many people had stopped making payments, or weren’t given proper information at the time, so it affected where they are now,” said Rice.

Many who stopped making payments did so because they were protesting against the MCK as a result of the housing scandal, feeling that they were not being kept in the loop or that insufficient efforts were being made to rectify the situation.

Montour said he is aware that for many, trust has been breached due to a lack of communication between the MCK and the victims, and the time it took for the MCK to take action.

He explained the reasons for that time were because the whole unit essentially needed to be remade.

“When I took this role, I was dealing with a multitude of problems within the housing unit,” said Montour.

“We had lack of employees, lack of resources. We did the studies, we did the restructuring, the rewriting of policies, the construction freeze was lifted, reconciliation of all the accounts. The final piece was actually doing something physically, morally right for our victims of fraud.”

That comes in the form of the amount allocated by the MCK. Rice said that the amount is not money being taken away from the budget, but instead being taken from future money.

“This is money that is recognized as revenue that’s meant to come in, although there are people who had this appropriation that probably shouldn’t have been charged. So, this is rectifying that,” he said.

The amount being reversed will depend on each person’s situation, and the $950,000 amount is an estimate, according to Rice.

“It’s a good estimate, but we anticipate it being less than that. We just want to make sure that in any cases, we’re not surprised by how much it is,” Rice said.

Montour said that the affected community members should receive word shortly, if they have not already, of what will be reversed.

Those who have not yet met with the Housing Unit and would like to do so, whether they believe they are victims of the fraud or not, can request a meeting. Furthermore, Montour strongly urged community members who have not updated their information to call the Housing Unit at 450-638-2672 to do so.

Notably, the interest reversal has only been offered to mortgage and Home Repair Loan program clients. There is no word of a relief being offered to renters who were victims of fraud.

“I have not been contacted,” said Tammy Whitebean when asked by The Eastern Door. Whitebean lost $5,000 in rent payments, and her eviction notice was one of the factors that exposed the fraud in 2018.

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