The foreclosure machine that ground to a halt in Puerto Rico after the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria in September is slowly cranking up again, the New York Times reported. Island residents who fell behind on their payments are facing creditors ranging from Wall Street to the federal government. Over the last four months, nearly 300 new foreclosure actions were filed in federal court in San Juan and in local courts across the island. Among the firms filing cases are an investment firm controlled by Credit Suisse, one in which the private equity firm TPG Capital is an investor and banks like Citigroup and Santander. Even the United States Department of Agriculture, which has underwritten more than 3,000 mortgages in mainly rural areas of Puerto Rico, has begun to foreclose on delinquent borrowers. The filings are some of the first in Puerto Rico since several federal agencies — including the U.S.D.A. — imposed moratoriums on new foreclosures and legal actions in existing cases after the hurricane devastated the island’s electrical grid. But the moratoriums have begun to expire, setting the stage for what housing advocates have feared could be a wave of home foreclosures in the United States territory of 3.4 million people.
