Senator hosts housing crisis roundtable

By Gene Hanson

“If your home is about to be foreclosed on, get counseling help right away.”

That was the message from U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, who hosted a housing crisis roundtable at Northland Neighborhoods on Friday, Mar. 21.

“In Missouri alone, 57,000 homeowners are delinquent on their mortgages and 20 percent of Missouri subprime borrowers are behind on their payments,” Bond said. “When people lose their homes, it has a devastating effect on families, neighborhoods, communities and the economy many times over.”

His sentiments were echoed by Colleen Hernandez of the Hope Hotline.

“There is nothing worse than doing nothing,” she said. “The Hope Hotline is taking an average of 4,500 calls a day. Homeowners in danger of losing their homes can get help.”

Bond co-authored the Security Against Foreclosures and Education (SAFE) Act that provides $180 million in loan counseling funds.

“We have already pushed $130 million of that out the door,” Bond said. “The remainder will be dispersed in an expedited fashion.”

A number of local agencies will receive funding for counseling. They include Neighborhood Housing Services of Kansas City; ACORN in Kansas City, a non-profit mortgage brokerage with CitiMortgage, Bank of America, First American Title Insurance Co. and Fannie Mae to help low- and moderate-income families find safe, affordable mortgages; Catholic Charities; Greater Kansas City Housing Information Center; Home Free-USA in Kansas City; Legal Aid of Western Missouri; and the Kansas City branch of the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America.

In addition to counseling, the service includes negotiating with lenders, formulating repayment plans, locating non-profit assistance and suspension or reduction of payments.

It also gives returning veterans foreclosure protection for six months instead of the current three months.

The SAFE Act also makes $10 billion available to refinance distressed subprime mortgages. It authorizes state housing financing agencies to issue up to $10 billion in tax-exempt bonds and uses the proceeds to refinance subprime mortgages.

“There are those who claim that we have not reached the bottom of this crisis yet,” Bond said. “I see it everywhere I go across Missouri and across the county. But we must stop the crisis at the local level and help as many people as we possibly can.”

There are few signs that the crisis is letting up.

More than 2.2 million foreclosure filings, including default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions, were posted nationwide in 2007, according to RealtyTrac, a firm that tracks housing foreclosure activity. That’s up 75 percent from 2006.

And while filings were up 75 percent, the number of properties in some stage of foreclosure was up 79 percent, indicating that some properties may have just entered the initial stage of foreclosure in 2007 and could be going through the rest of the foreclosure process in 2008.

Business Editor Gene Hanson can be reached at 389-6638 or at ghanson@npgco.com.