Last month, JP Morgan Chase — the largest bank in the United States — launched a project to digitize the documents of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders, making them available on the internet. “It’s important for JPMorgan Chase to support Dr. King’s legacy because of the important values he committed his life to promoting, such as equality, equal opportunity, and quality education for all. People like Dr. Martin Luther King are what made America what it is today. The values he espoused are the values that JPMorgan Chase also tries to stand for around the world,” said JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

But at the same time, as Change.org has noted, the bank is on the verge of foreclosing on a 78 year-old former civil rights activist:

Helen Bailey is a 78-year-old grandmother who participated in the civil rights movement, worked as a childcare provider for autistic children, and was a community volunteer. She has paid her mortgage since 1999, but now she can’t keep up the payments. All she wants is to stay in her home until she dies, in the neighborhood where she feels safe and has lived for nearly quarter of a century. She could have refinanced with a company willing to let her live in the house for free until her death, but Chase Bank would not reduce her principal by $9,000. She’s been paying 7% interest, well above most rates, so Chase could have decided they had made enough. Instead, they have started foreclosure…While Chase tries to tie itself to the incredible legacy of Martin Luther King, who really did believe in communities, Chase tries to throw a grandmother who marched for civil rights out onto the street.

“JP Morgan Chase must practice what it preaches,” said Gary Flowers, Executive Director and CEO of the Black Leadership Forum, Inc. “On one hand, the bank cannot earnestly invoke the values of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., while devaluing the very principles for which he lived and died.”

This is not the only mortgage-related issue JP Morgan has brought upon itself recently. Last year, JP Morgan found itself in hot water for overcharging members of the military on their mortgages, eventually agreeing to a $56 million settlement. The bank even sold off the home of a military member on the very day that he returned from Iraq.

One former JP Morgan banker told Reuters, “I don’t say this lightly, but the consumer is simply an income stream and exploiting that is the purpose of the banking organization.” And evidently that exploitation extends to touting the bank’s commitment to civil rights with one hand while foreclosing on a former civil rights activist with the other.

About 20 California activists surrounded a local home this weekend to prevent Freddie Mac and Chase Bank from foreclosing on the property, even amid rumors that sheriff’s deputies were coming to seize it. The Riverside, California home belongs to Arturo de los Santos, a former Marine who told Riverside’s City News Service that he fell behind on his payments when business plummeted at the factory where he’s employed.

De los Santos said he applied for a modification to his mortgage to lower his monthly costs, only to be rejected by Chase. The bank then initiated foreclosure proceedings, and a local judge granted possession to mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which guaranteed the loan, last week. That allows the local sheriff to seize the property, a situation de los Santos and the Occupiers are trying to prevent, CNS reports:

He said around 20 demonstrators are staying inside and outside the three-bedroom property.

De los Santos told CNS last week that he was prepared to get arrested to spotlight how “the bank is messing up.”

The former U.S. Marine sent a letter to Sheriff Stan Sniff explaining his circumstances and asking the county’s top law enforcement officer not to carry out an eviction.

De los Santos’ story, unfortunately, has become all too common. President Obama’s foreclosure prevention programs have fallen woefully short and Republicans in Congress refuse to take steps — such as taxing large banks to pay for further homeowner assistance — to alleviate the nation’s housing crisis. Banks and lenders, meanwhile, have made the problem worse, perpetuating fraudulent foreclosures, illegally foreclosing on military members and other homeowners, and foreclosing on homes they don’t even own.

Across the country, Occupy Our Homes has drawn attention to these problems by placing homeless families in vacant homes, disrupting foreclosure auctions, and forcing banks to renegotiate mortgage terms on properties in foreclosure. “I know because of them I am still in my home,” an Atlanta woman said of the Occupiers in December. “They got everyday people like myself involved. Everyday people contacting Chase and advocating for me, peaceful demonstrations, people calling and writing in.”

The Obama administration — in addition to announcing a new mortgage refinancing program, paid for by implementing a tax on the nation’s biggest banks — has introduced another round of fixes for its signature foreclosure prevention program, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). HAMP has fallen woefully short of expectations, due to a combination of design flaws, bank intransigence, and a significant amount of bank incompetence.

The new HAMP features include expanding the debt-to-income requirements for participation, paying investors more for principal reductions, and extending the program’s application deadline through 2013. According to an analysis from JP Morgan Chase, the changes should aid 500,000 homeowners:

A recent expansion of the Home Affordable Modification Program is expected to result in 500,000 mortgage modifications that otherwise would not have taken place, bank analysts said…JPMorgan Chase [[JPM]] analysts said in a report Monday they expect 1.7 million additional borrowers could qualify for the program under the more lenient DTI requirements – meaning more of their debt not just their first lien mortgage would be calculated in.

The administration’s housing programs have reached just 20 percent of the households they were supposed to, with HAMP helping 910,000 homeowners, far short of the 4 million at which it was aimed. Just a fraction of the money allocated to the program has even been spent.

“The housing crisis has been the single biggest drag on our recovery from the recession,” Obama said in his latest weekly address. “It has kept millions of families in debt and unable to spend, and it has left hundreds of thousands of construction workers out of a job.” Today, the economics bloggers at Calculated Risk predicted that the housing market it at its bottom, while “the list of housing markets showing measurable improvement expanded by 29 metros in February to 98 on the National Association of Home Builders/First American Improving Markets Index released on Monday.”

Hopefully these numbers, as well as renewed interest from the administration in aiding troubled homeowners will result in housing going from a drag on the economy to a boost.