I was disturbed to read in yesterday's Times that individuals who have lost their homes due to foreclosure are in danger of losing their right to vote as well if they don't re-register at their new location.

If this isn't the height of audacity, I don't know what is. First people lost their homes and then they lose their right to vote as a result. As if people who become homeless have time to think about whether they have re-registered.

And, of course, people who have lost their homes are not likely to vote Republican.

One of the more alarming features of the “sub-prime” lending crisis is that it was widely noticed by grass-roots advocates. For years, from South Brooklyn Legal Services , from The Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project and The Children’s Defense Fund-NY have come warnings of the foreclosure wave now swamping lower income New Yorkers and some speculators in “sub-prime” mortgage securities. Predatory, often utterly fraudulent, lending practices have been draining painfully accumulated economic capital from lower income minority communities. Click here for a story on the NYC foreclosure spike. Cries of alarm and calls for policy shifts in the fall of ’06 (CDF-NY sponsored conference at UFT) and the winter of ’07 (the Alliance For Fairness In Lending campaign of progressives, unions and policy groups) had no political traction whatsoever.

The Drum Major Institute meets on this issue this Thursday, October 11, 8-10AM at Pace University's Downtown Conference Center. Light breakfast, free. Registration hot link and more information after the jump