A "messy" foreclosure scandal that defers the American dream of home ownership.

That's the overwhelming reaction in the Caribbean immigrant and African-American communities to the decision by several major financial institutions, including Bank of America, GMAC Mortgage and J.P. Morgan Chase to suspend foreclosures in 23 states across the country, where a judge's approval is needed before a property can be foreclosed.

"A minefield is being created by some of the banks for people to walk through in this foreclosure mess," said Yvette Clarke, U.S. Congresswoman from Brooklyn. "Here we have financial institutions which received taxpayer dollars that helped them to stabilize their finances but they are putting people through purgatory of not knowing when or if these lenders would come through for them. We are now going through the information provided to us by homeowners who turned to our office for help. Many of my constituents have brought to our attention the huge obstacles they are facing in their efforts to modify their mortgage agreements. These institutions are operating as if it's a case of business as usual. What is needed now, more so than ever, is a partnership between the banks and other mortgage lenders and homeowners who are experiencing these hard times, the sub-prime meltdown and other economic difficulties." A stunning revelation showed that some of the major banks had skirted the laws through a mix of sloppy paperwork and a huge of volume of foreclosure had signed off on foreclosures even though their employees hadn't verified the accuracy of the information contained in the documents as required by law.

The upshot: foreclosures are in doubt as well as the real owners of properties across the country, including New York. Not only have bank suspended foreclosures but they have asked the housing mortgage agency, Fannie Mae, to stop selling any of the foreclosed homes it had bought from the financial institutions.

Thousands of pending foreclosures and sales are now caught in the web of uncertainty or of what is being called a "second foreclosure crisis in New York."

Edmund Sadio, owner/broker of Century 21 Achievers Real Estate company in Flatbush, predicted that the "mess" created by the banks' inefficiency would eventually hurt homeowners and the real estate market as a whole.

"There are going to be fewer properties on the market now and people who want to buy homes would either be reluctant to go forward or there will be fewer houses to buy," he told the Carib News. "Everything is in limbo and until this entire situation is straightened out the problems will remain."

He sees a nightmare for many homeowners who would be forced to stay in their homes without knowing what was happening with their mortgages or worst without any mortgages at all.

Sadio said that while his agency wouldn't suffer any significant damage because "we don't deal in a lot of foreclosures," the overall unhealthy state of the real estate industry was taking a heavy toll on everyone.

"There are properties right now that are empty and you wouldn't believe that they would be in that state, due to the economy and conditions in the market," he said.

Hazra Ali, a real estate executive, warned that the suspensions would create chaos," by encouraging people already in trouble to believe that they don't have to take any action and they would be able to hold onto their properties. All of this is unfair to the housing industry," she charged. "What is really needed is for the financial institutions to hire and train more employees to handle foreclosures so that the process can go forward. They cut back on the number of employees forcing many of them to take shortcuts that ended up in the mess before us."

Curtis Rullow, a real estate broker, felt the same way.

"What's so terrible about this is that it is creating false hopes about a possible reprieve for those in foreclosure proceedings," said the Caribbean immigrant. "This is very messy and in the end about 95 percent of those properties which were scheduled to be foreclosed would eventually be lost to the current homeowners. It's sad but many of the people are going to lose their properties when the suspensions are lifted and normalcy returns to the marketplace."

Like Clarke, Ali and Sadio, Rullow complained about the reluctance of many banks to modify the mortgage agreements or to provide new loans to prospective buyers.

"This suspension is hurting people all around," he said.