Home rescue fair seeks to prevent foreclosures

By Mitch Talley, Whitfield County director of communications

While some experts say the nation’s economy is emerging from a recession, try telling that to the ever-growing list of local residents facing foreclosure.

“You see this stuff on the news, oh, the economy’s getting better,” says Gaile Jennings of the Dalton-Whitfield Community Development Corp. “It might be in other places, but when we had our Home Rescue Fair here last September, at that time, one in seven households in Georgia were behind on their mortgage. Well, now it’s one in six.”

Jennings is helping organize another Home Rescue Fair for next month, designed to give people a chance to talk to experts and come up with a plan to try and save their home from foreclosure.

The second Home Rescue Fair – also sponsored by the Alliance for Stabilizing Our Communities - is planned for Saturday, July 17 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center. The event is being offered at no charge to everyone, no matter where they live.

“Because we had the last one in September and we saw so many people (250 people, 150 households),” Jennings said, “we just felt like a year was too long to wait to have another Home Rescue Fair.”

“Another thing that’s happened in the interim is that some more of the carpet mills have cut people’s hours and laid people off so we have more job loss in the community,” said Christine Green, a lawyer for Georgia Legal Assistance who will be at the event to offer legal advice.

“Our local governments want their citizens to keep their homes because it makes our community a better place, and without the budgetary support of the Whitfield County and Dalton governments, we wouldn’t be here to be able to provide this assistance,” said Jennings.

She said events like the Home Rescue Fair usually attract an average of 20 lenders, who are authorized to do loan modifications that day. “When people walk out of the trade center that day, they’ll have something in their hand to help their situation,” Jennings said.

Even if a person’s specific lender is not there that day, participating in the home rescue fair will still start the ball rolling and get the process started to save their home.

“The Alliance for Stabilizing Our Communities and the Community Development Corporation have organized this event to help provide you with the tools and resources you need to make informed decisions about the options available to you,” Jennings said.

She stressed that there is no reason to feel embarrassed about seeking the service. “We are here to help people in need,” she said. “Part of the problem is that people are really embarrassed and don’t want to talk about it. They don’t understand that the majority of the cases we see, the two main reasons for getting to the point where you could potentially lose your home are a major medical crisis that keeps a person from working and the loss of income either because of job loss or a cut in hours.”

Green agreed. “Some people are in denial, but there’s also a lot of anxiety,” she said. “They’re so anxious that they could lose their house, they can’t even face it. It’s easier to ignore it and pretend that things are OK.”

With double-digit unemployment in Whitfield County, however, foreclosures are definitely a very real fact of life here.

“The need is worse than it’s ever been for the type of help at the Home Rescue Fair,” Jennings said. “The need has been there, but the need continues. I have to check the credit report every month to see if any of our clients have filed bankruptcy or lost their homes. We’re averaging about 100 new foreclosures a month in Whitfield County and Murray County.”

Figures aren’t available on how many of the 150 households that received help at last year’s Home Rescue Fair ended up in foreclosure anyway, “but we did do an exit survey and 80 percent said the Home Rescue Fair would help their situation,” Jennings said.

That’s why she feels it’s important for residents in danger of losing their homes to attend the fair. There’s a real possibility that participants may be able to get a better interest rate and payment plan easier to meet by talking to their lender.

“At last year’s fair, 60 percent of the participants had never talked to their lender or housing counselor or an attorney,” Jennings said.

Instead, many of them had been listening to the Collections Department at their lender.

“I think what scares people the most is that we’re telling them one thing and then they’re flipping out because Collections calls and says, ‘Oh no, you gotta pay $3,000 by this day or we’re gonna send your home to foreclosure.’ Well, they might, but if they’re in active loan modification, the mortgage company will postpone the foreclosure until a determination has been made about their application. Collections is not giving them any hope – pay us so much by next week! – but if they’ve got a legitimate hardship – loss of income, divorce, major medical illness – then there is hope. We tell our clients to tell Collections that they’re in the middle of a loan modification process and that they’ve been instructed not to make any changes.”

That type of advice from Jennings and her staff can help guide residents through the loan modification process.

“Some people are just intimidated by the process,” she said. “Others think they can do it on their own, but you don’t know how many people we’ve gotten as clients, not that they’re not intelligent, but it’s just so frustrating to deal with this. I mean, you can fax stuff to the mortgage company and then you call and they say they didn’t get it. I tell them, I’ve got a confirmation on my fax machine where you did get it; I’ll go ahead and refax it but I don’t want my client penalized for not submitting it in a timely manner. Clients sometimes struggle with that kind of stuff, where we don’t.”

Also, the economic crisis has brought an increase in scam operators, who often send out legitimate-looking letters that have fooled some homeowners into sending money to these bogus companies thinking they are going to solve their foreclosure crisis.

“If people try to solve their foreclosure problems on their own,” Jennings said, “sometimes they can get scammed. Even if they call their lenders, they will get the Collections Department, where it is their job to collect money. But if they come to us, we will call someone whose job it is to save their loan. We have certain phone numbers we can call that are not available to the general public, and we can get help for these people.”

At the Home Rescue Fair, homeowners will benefit from:

-One-on-one sessions with a loan specialist;

-HUD-approved housing counselors and attorneys;

-Foreclosure prevention workshops (many of which will be going on in the waiting area before clients are seen)

-Assistance in English and Spanish.

If you need help, you MUST bring the following documents with you to the Rescue Fair: current pay stubs (within the past 30 days), 2008 and 2009 income-tax returns, three months of bank statements, household expense budget, copy of closing documents and most recent correspondence from your mortgage company, most recent property-insurance and mortgage statements, and a letter explaining reasons for current financial situation.

“With this information, even if your lender is not at the Rescue Fair, we can still start the process so that we can schedule an appointment with you and be ready to contact your lender,” Jennings said.

More than 50 volunteers are needed to help run the fair, and if you’d like to fill that role to help your fellow residents keep their homes, call Ms. Jennings at (706) 876-1677.

Parents are encouraged to leave their children with other caregivers, but if that is not possible, a child care area will be staffed throughout the day, except for kids in diapers.

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