OAKLAND—More than 375 Oakland property owners lost their homes to foreclosure during the first eight months of the year, victims of increasingly prevalent predatory-lending schemes in the city—and Oakland City Attorney John Russo says he won’t allow it any longer.

On Thursday he plans to introduce a citywide program that will include a telephone hotline, a public-education campaign and a foreclosure-assistance workshop.

He also plans to introduce bills to the California legislature that, if passed, would provide legal protection for predatory-lending victims.

“Lenders have targeted low-income and elderly communities,” said Alex Katz, legal communications director for Russo’s office. “They’ve used some very shady practices to get people to sign loans. There are some very shady lenders focused on these types of communities.”

Lenders offer trusting owners seemingly affordable sub-prime loans, often reserved for those who don’t qualify for normal loans, have bad credit or are not U.S. citizens. But their adjustable rates allow lenders to increase monthly payments, sometimes without warning. When owners can’t pay, the property faces foreclosure, often destroying owners’ credit ratings and forcing them out of homes they’ve lived in for decades.

Once example of this is Dorothy Hicks, a 74-year-old retired federal employee whose East Oakland home is in foreclosure, according to Russo’s office. When she needed cash for the business she owns, she re-financed her 67th Street home twice, unknowingly agreeing to an adjustable-rate home loan and ever-increasing monthly payments. When she could no longer afford the payments, Hicks’ home went into foreclosure and she began to speak out against predatory lending.

“My credit is now in the toilet because I’ve had trouble meeting the payments,” she said at an August meeting of the state Senate’s Banking, Finance and Insurance Committee. “Unless I can figure out a way to get out of this mess, I’m going to lose a home I’ve lived in for almost 40 years.”

Foreclosures don’t just affect the families that lose their homes, but whole neighborhoods, Katz said. When landlords’ rental properties enter into foreclosure, their tenants often lose electricity and water services and then receive eviction notices. One West Oakland family went without running water for a week and without electricity for a month last summer, according to Katz.

Abandoned properties often attract “anti-social behavior,” such as drug use and prostitution, he said.

Russo’s effort to stop predatory lending isn’t a first for Oakland. In 2001, the Oakland City Council passed an ordinance to protect low-income and elderly property owners from predatory lending, but a 2005 California Supreme Court ruling invalidated it, determining that state law trumped the local ordinance.

Lenders’ questionable tactics entice homeowners to sign paperwork, and low-income and elderly owners are the most vulnerable, according to Russo’s office.

“Predatory lenders have been extremely successful in Oakland,” Russo said in a written statement. “They have targeted our communities with deceptive and aggressive marketing, and people across the city have agreed to deals that were literally too good to be true.”

Hicks, whose home loans were nearly paid off a decade ago, will speak at a press conference tomorrow morning during which Russo will announce his anti-predatory lending program.

The press conference will begin at 10 a.m. at the second-floor landing of Oakland City Hall, at 14th and Clay Streets in downtown Oakland. Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and representatives of the Oakland Fair Lending Commission and of Senator Don Perata’s office will make appearances.

Russo’s foreclosure-assistance workshop will be held on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Oakland City Hall. Registration for the free event begins at 9 a.m.

For more information about Russo’s anti-predatory lending effort, visit oaklandcityattorney.org/community_ini.html.

Talia Kennedy is a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Reach her at tmkennedy@berkeley.edu.