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Mortgage Counselors Gather to Plan Strategy
June 1, 2011
“With funding cutbacks imminent, the aspirations of homeowners struggling to meet their housing needs rest with the innovation and collaboration taking place during this convening.”
Ali Tarzi, Counseling & Loss Mitigation Supervisor
San Francisco, Calif. — During the last two days, 75 mortgage counselors from across California convened in Sacramento to share strategies and best practices that prevent foreclosures and help neighborhoods. Counselors shared their frustrations with banks' dysfunctional responses and told countless stories of homeowners who were trying to modify their mortgages and stay in their homes.
Californians are suffering from a record number of foreclosures and the ongoing economic crisis.1 There have been 1.2 million foreclosures in California since 2008; that number is expected to reach 2 million by the end of 2012. California Attorney General Kamala Harris recently announced that California’s families have lost $640 billion of wealth due to the foreclosure crisis.2 Counseling agencies are working hard to save people’s homes, while banks and the federal government have cut funding and support for these agencies.
This third annual convening of counselors in the midst of the housing crisis featured sessions on best practices in foreclosure counseling, creative methods in meeting high demand with less funding, and efforts to work together to broaden support of foreclosure counseling.
“With funding cutbacks imminent, the aspirations of homeowners struggling to meet their housing needs rest with the innovation and collaboration taking place during this convening,” said Ali Tarzi, Counseling & Loss Mitigation Supervisor at Community HousingWorks in San Diego, California.
“These counselors are community heroes trying to keep neighborhoods intact,” said Alan Fisher, Executive Director of the California Reinvestment Coalition. “Despite dramatic cuts in funding and dysfunctional bank practices, they continue on. We all hope the state and federal governments will apply real pressure on the banks and restore crucial counseling funds.”
The convening was jointly sponsored by the California Reinvestment Coalition, National Council of La Raza, and the Rural Community Assistance Corporation.
For more information, please contact Kristina Bedrossian from the California Reinvestment Coalition at 415/864-3980; kbedrossian@calreinvest.org.
1 RealtyTrac data for 2008 to 2009, and 2010 data and projected foreclosures for 2011 and 2012 based on Moody’s Analytics.
2 LA Times, 23 May 2011, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mortgage-fraud-20110523,0,1196882.story.
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