Crains Cleveland recently featured an article discussing the Cuyahoga County foreclosure program and efforts to increase awareness and funding.

Study: Foreclosure program helping Cuyahoga residents

A preliminary study of a Cuyahoga County foreclosure program has found that homeowners could avoid losing their homes if they seek help early enough.

But county commissioner Tim Hagan interrupted a presentation on the report at today’s commissioners’ meeting to blast mortgage lenders after hearing that clients of the county’s new foreclosure prevention program, people on the brink of foreclosure, were largely African-American and female.

“They’re no good sons of bitches,” Mr. Hagan said of mortgage lenders who make questionable loans. “This is corporations preying upon the minority population in this community.”

Alan Weinstein, a Cleveland State University associate professor of law and urban studies, told county commissioners that since its beginning in February of this year, the program helped to avert 231 foreclosures and that 95 workouts were pending. All of this, he said, suggests that early intervention is important in avoiding foreclosures.

Mark Wiseman, director of the Cuyahoga County Foreclosure Prevention Program, said people often start to look for help when it is too late for his group to help avoid financial disaster. The county program provides referral and financial counseling to people concerned about losing their homes.

One recommendation made by Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Wiseman was a rescue fund that could be used to help work out problem mortgages. Mr. Wiseman said that while it might take $100 million to solve the problems of all 12,000 homes in the county facing foreclosure, a rescue fund of $1 million a year would allow the program to handle the most immediate problems.

The current program has a $600,000 budget, with Cuyahoga County kicking in the lion’s share and banks and foundations the rest.