HLC Housing Agenda Blog

Project Sentinel’s fair housing symposium featured a workshop on foreclosure

Today I attended HLC member Project Sentinel’s fair housing symposium. Project Sentinel is a non-profit agency “providing services to help people resolve housing problems,” and is a HUD-approved housing counseling agency.

They have had numerous calls from homeowners facing foreclosure, so I was interested to attend the morning workshop on that topic. The presenters were Maeve Elise Brown from Housing and Economic Rights Advocates (HERA), a California statewide, not-for-profit legal service and advocacy organization, and Kevin Stein, from the California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC), which advocates for the right of low-income communities and communities of color to have fair and equal access to banking and other financial services.

Brown gave the startling statistic that in California, 20% of subprime adjustable-rate mortgage loans are 30-90 days past due on payments, the first step heading toward foreclosure. In California, there were 57,000 foreclosure proceedings started in January 2008 alone.

Brown listed proposed changes to federal law, including amendments to the Truth in Lending Act, the proposed Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act (HR3648) and Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act (HR 3915), and proposed changes to bankruptcy laws. The

Stein reviewed state legislation, including SB 1137, which would amend the foreclosure process; AB 1830, mortgage reform and anti-predatory lending. Stein said CRC is calling for outreach and education as well as support for housing counselors; for lenders to work out loan modifications with borrowers; and outlaw bad lending practices. He also had some charts and graphs illustrating the nature of the problem, drawn from CRC’s analysis of federal mortgage disclosure data.

All in all, an informative session on a complex and rapidly evolving topic.