NTIC’s affiliate, Empowering and Strengthening Ohio’s People, is a great example of a community group combating foreclosures locally.
Fixing foreclosure’s ground zero
Community groups are joining hands with their former foes to help keep the city’s residents from losing their homes.
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writerNovember 16 2007: 7:59 AM ESTCLEVELAND (CNNMoney.com) — Foreclosures may have reached a crisis point in Cleveland, but grass-roots efforts are sending some relief to troubled homeowners.Counselors from more than a dozen non-profit community organizations are working with delinquent borrowers and lenders to help people keep their homes, and they say it’s getting easier.It’s a growth industry funded by charitable foundations, individual contributors, the local government and the lending industry itself. Cleveland Housing Network (CHN) hosts group counseling sessions of about 30 people three times a week, up from one a week a year ago. Another organization, the East Side Organizing Project (ESOP), has gone from two foreclosure counselors to six during the past year.They say their relationships with lenders, once adversarial, have grown more co-operative. The kinds of loan workouts available are changing and improving, according to Mark Seifert, executive director of ESOP. In the past, he said, lenders did little more than toss crumbs. [click on above link for full article]
