Neediest Cases Fund Helps SBLS Client Family Stay in Their Home

November 6, 2010- Today's installment of the New York Times' Neediest Cases series focuses on Cynthia Turay, a Brooklyn mother of five who was able to stay in her home thanks to legal assistance from South Brooklyn Legal Services and financial assistance from the Neediest Cases Fund and the Children's Aid Society.

From the NYT article:

The family of seven eventually, in 2001, moved to a three-bedroom house in Mill Basin, but Ms. Turay was holding down three jobs to help afford it. For six years, she worked in medical billing at a hospital and at a home for retirees, and as a cashier at Pathmark.

But her oldest child suffered from the lack of attention and struggled in school, so she quit her jobs, and used the money she had saved up to open her beauty-supply business, which specialized in wigs.

In 2006 she refinanced, and put the money into repairing and renovating the home. Three months after she got her home loan, it was sold to another bank. Not long after that, her payments ballooned to $2,648, from $1,700. In 2008, her husband was laid off, and making payments became impossible. Ms. Turay said she called her bank to negotiate new payments, but her calls went largely unreturned. She was foreclosed upon, and she lost her business. She said the stress prompted the end of her third marriage.

“I said, ‘God, what is going on in my life?’ ” she remembered thinking at the time. “Is it my husband I should be crying for, the roof over my head, my business — where do I start?”

Out of options, Ms. Turay called 311. A dispatcher there referred her to South Brooklyn Legal Services, a beneficiary of the Children’s Aid Society, one of the seven beneficiary agencies of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund and the one that oversees a special fund to help victims of subprime mortgages.

The organization negotiated a trial modification plan that reduced her monthly mortgage payments to $1,852. Neediest Cases money kicked in the first two payments, and she was able to reopen her business. 

Read the full New York Times article by clicking here.

Click here to find out more about the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, including how you can help. 

Below: New York Times Company Foundation President Jack
Rosenthal accepts a Visionary Leadership Award on behalf of the Neediest
Cases Fund. The award (bottom, center) was presented at Legal Services
NYC's Annual Jazz for Justice Fundraiser in June 2009.