A foreclosure prevention team at St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center in Baltimore the largest of its kind, is weighed down with the troubles of thousands of homeowners. It has the capacity to handle 1,900 per year but with 150,000 needing help the load is too heavy. Over 150,000 homeowners in Maryland are defaulting on their mortgages.
It is now three years that foreclosure waves have been lashing the country. Despite billions spent on bailouts the crisis has not even abated, leave alone solved, bemoaned the team at St. Ambrose comprising of nine employees together with one volunteer. From their offices in Barclay they can see rows of abandoned houses as they attend to never ending streams of help seekers anxious and gloomy. Stress has become infectious. The counselors too are feeling depressed. The employees are undergoing the same pressure as their clients as the work is often heart rending and frustrating.
The counselors are negotiating with the banks and the services to stop homes from going to the auction block. The counselors are feeling they are being pushed to the front lines and bearing the brunt of the attack. The banks are slow and contradictory in their replies causing the foreclosure problem to drag on trying the patience of all for months.
Emotions are at such a stretching point that the director of foreclosure prevention at St. Ambrose Anne Balcer Norton is mulling over plans for setting up panic buttons in the rooms where the staff confer with the clients.
During the housing bubble one of the easiest things was to get a housing loan but now to modify the loan is fiendishly well nigh impossible. Right across the nation the counselors are trying to assist the borrowers through a path that seems to be changing by the day as the federal government makes innumerable alterations. Documents that lenders want to see have to be collected and followed up with the servicer waiting for someone to take a decision.
The HAMP plan initiated by the Obama team has set aside $35 billion to make the process of modification easy so that monthly payments are lowered for the eligible borrowers. But even after the passage of a year the majority of borrowers continue to languish without succour. They have not even managed to get into the trial stage. Only 5% of the loans have been modified permanently. Meanwhile more homeowners are losing jobs. The borrowers now do not have the funds to pay even reduced mortgages.