Photo by Photos by Chip Py

Perhaps getting their camping gear cleared out of McPherson Square was exactly the push Occupy D.C. needed. Last week demonstrators picketed outside the Walmart site on Georgia Avenue NW (with mixed results), and next week, the group plans to return to the Occupy Wall Street movement’s roots of outrage over the nation’s enduring foreclosure crisis.

In adopting the Occupy Our Homes tactic, protesters say they will gather next Monday outside the Penn Quarter offices of Freddie Mac, the federally backed mortgage giant, on behalf of a Bowie, Md. resident whose house has been foreclosed upon.

Occupiers are taking up the case of Bertina Jones, whom according to their press release was foreclosed upon in September 2010. Jones, who bought the house in March 1997 with a loan from Bank of America, first fell behind on her mortgage payments in September 2008 after losing her job when economy collapsed. Jones applied for but did not receive assistance from the Home Affordable Modification Program, which Occupy D.C. chalks up to clerical error and “inattention” on the part of Bank of America, which sold the mortgage on Jones’ house to Freddie Mac in September 2010.

After more than a year since the foreclosure, Jones is still in her home and trying to convince Freddie Mac to reverse the transaction so she can resume making payments on the mortgage.

Occupy D.C.’s angle, the group says, will be similar to what Occupy protests in other cities have done in recent months to prevent foreclosed homeowners from being evicted. Perhaps most notable was an effort by the Occupy group in Atlanta, which last December protested at the house of an Iraq war veteran facing foreclosure by JPMorgan Chase. After several days of demonstrations, bank representatives told activists they would modify the mortgage saving the owner, Brigitte Walker, several hundred dollars a month. Walker had been scheduled to be evicted in January, The Huffington Post reported.

Jones’ house in Bowie is as good a rallying point as any. Maryland has been hard by the foreclosure crisis, Prince George’s County in particular, where one-third of the state’s foreclosures are located. The state recently won $959 million from major lenders in a class-action lawsuit filed by most U.S. states.

Occupy D.C. has its sights set high with Jones’ house. Given the track record of the Occupy Our Homes tack—activities in New York and California have yielded results similar to those in Atlanta—”we expect to win,” Occupy D.C. says in its press release.