Foreclosure Funding Cuts Threaten Struggling NY Homeowners

A March 24th Daily News article brings attention to the potential consequences of funding cuts to foreclosure prevention assistance being considered at the state level. The piece quotes both LS-NYC Director of Foreclosure Prevention Litigation Jacob Inwald and Queens Legal Services Staff Attorney Franklin Romeo, and examines the case of Legal Services NYC-Bronx client Elaine Ochoa.

From the article:

Ochoa and hundreds of homeowners citywide were spared from losing
their dwellings by foreclosure prevention services. Now, those services
need to be rescued.

Gov. Cuomo's budget does not include the
necessary $15 million to keep the programs running. Plus, the federal
stimulus funds administered by the state run out in December.

Households
in East New York, Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens, were hit hardest last
year, with 1,139 and 1,262 foreclosure filings, respectively. Jamaica
had the highest total number of foreclosures over the last three years,
with 1,031.

"So many people were encouraged by people they trusted
for financial advice to take on a great deal of debt," said Franklin
Romeo of Queens Legal Services. "I think that Jamaica and Southeast
Queens were the neighborhoods most targeted for predatory lending."

Cuomo
budget spokesman Morris Peters said that as the state tries to close a
$10 billion budget gap, "it's hard to take on new state spending to
replace lost federal dollars."

But advocates and those affected disagree.

"We
have a governor who was the former secretary of housing, who you would
think would be sensitive to the issues, but nonetheless did not include
it in his budget," said Jacob Inwald, director of foreclosure prevention
litigation for Legal Services NYC.

Inwald and his colleagues claim the state is not yet halfway through its foreclosure crisis.

"People
are subdividing their houses and renting out their basements so they
can meet their mortgages," said Neal Duncan, president of the United
Canarsie South Civic Association in Brooklyn.

Ochoa enlisted the
help of Bronx Legal Services. They submitted a new application combining
Ochoa and her son's incomes and refinanced to an affordable mortgage of
$1,600 a month.

"I would have been in a shelter," Ochoa said.

 Read the full piece at NYDailyNews.com.