Noleston's basic themes are familiar by now. The affected borrowers often are people with no credit problems, no history of missed payments. In other words, they kept their side of the bargain.

"Like everyone else on this thread, we have no credit or income problems," Armando Sanchez wrote April 10.

They get a letter from their lender, saying their home has declined in value. As a result, they cannot make further withdrawals from their HELOC account, or the maximum withdrawal has been reduced.

"Funny thing," Sanchez wrote, "they will send me a credit card with a line of $20K which we all know is unsecured, but they wont free up the same amount on a secured line."

Some feel the lender is wrong about the decline in value. But the more basic argument is about, well, equity. If your home declines in value, you still need to pay the mortgage. But the bank can simply shut down your HELOC. And that doesn't seem consistent with the way a good business partner behaves.

Susie Barnes wrote on February 24,

This suspension happened to us as well with no notification until they froze the account and bounced a check that we had deposited from our HELOC. I have been a mortgage loan officer/consultant in the State of Michigan for sixteen years and have never heard of this ever happening before. It is outrageous. I have no late payments either and our home has certainly not fallen in value by 50% since last summer when our most recent appraisal was completed. Sadly I am reminded that I have sold millions of dollars of good loans to this company over the years.

Finally, some writers note their lingering suspicion that the cause of the suspension has nothing to do with them or with their homes. Instead, they are being punished for the lender's errors with other borrowers.

Kevin Nelson wrote on February 2,

At the time of entering into the HELOC agreement it was our understanding the temporary suspension clause which is being used to suspend our HELOC was in the contract to make sure we took reasonable care and maintenance of our property and home. It was never explained or our understanding that “banks” were planning to issue excessive loans to developers and allow them to build excess home inventory in our market and the “banks” were issuing subprime loans to under qualified buyers and then the “banks” would be auctioning off these homes at prices below cost which would then deflate home values in the area.

I believe the intended contractual purpose of this clause was to protect the bank from my actions or inactions. I do not believe the purpose of this clause was intended to allow the bank to further mitigate risk fears which are directly related to the banks own actions in contracts unrelated to mine.

If you've lost your HELOC, we're interested to hear your story, too.

If you're looking for advice, a recent piece in Money Magazine discusses the best options for borrowers, both those whose HELOCs haven't yet been frozen and those fighting to regain access to their lines of credit.