What: A nonprofit organization that offers mortgage default counseling to help prevent foreclosure, along with homeowner and credit education classes.
Employees: Five full- and part-time.
Annual budget: $390,000.
Clients: Counseled 2,617 households in 2009.
Where: 2700 N.E. Andresen Road, Suite D-3, Vancouver.
Information: 360-690-4496 or homecen.org.
Washington state foreclosure hot line: 877-894-HOME (4663).
Financial literacy will be the keynote topic served with breakfast at an event in Vancouver today to support the Community Housing Resource Center.
The nonprofit invited Scott Jarvis, director of the Washington state Department of Financial Institutions, to speak at the annual Home is Where the Heart is Breakfast at 7:30 a.m. at the Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay. About 150 people are expected to attend in support of the center, which offers foreclosure counseling, homeowner education and credit repair classes.
The help is needed on the consumer frontline of the worst economic decline in decades, said Jarvis, whose agency regulates state banks and other financial service providers.
What: A nonprofit organization that offers mortgage default counseling to help prevent foreclosure, along with homeowner and credit education classes.
Employees: Five full- and part-time.
Annual budget: $390,000.
Clients: Counseled 2,617 households in 2009.
Where: 2700 N.E. Andresen Road, Suite D-3, Vancouver.
Information: 360-690-4496 or homecen.org.
Washington state foreclosure hot line: 877-894-HOME (4663).
“Many people either got in over their heads because of poor judgment or they were the victims of bad timing, deception or fraud,” Jarvis said.
His agency also manages a host of Web site programs that are aimed at teaching people to live within their financial means, Jarvis said.
“It’s really the key and it starts early, with a plastic piggy bank,” he said.
Despite a mortgage meltdown that has severely restricted lending practices, Jarvis believes a new crop of risky loan products will eventually replace the subprime and adjustable-rate mortgage loans of the mid-2000s.
“People should keep in mind there’s no shortage of ways for people to separate you from your money. That’s why people need to be educated to analyze each product,” he said.
The fallout of mortgage misinformation and fraud are patently evident in Clark County, where more than 2,600 households were counseled by foreclosure and credit repair experts at the housing center in 2009, said Teri Duffy, executive director.
Sluggish home sales here have left many homeowners unable to sell. Countywide layoffs and a shortage of job prospects continue to reduce household incomes.
“Now we’re seeing a number of people who have used up all of their available unemployment benefits,” Duffy said.
Out of Washington’s 39 counties, Clark County had the third-highest rate of foreclosure activity in January, with one out of every 511 households in some stage of foreclosure, reported RealtyTrac, which tracks nationwide foreclosure data.
Improvement?
However, the county’s 318 foreclosure filings in January represented a 20 percent decline from the 397 filings in January 2009.
Duffy said home center counselors last year were able help 60 percent of those facing foreclosure to get loan modifications — reducing payments by up to $500 per month.
The adjustments illustrate how the county’s high rate of foreclosure will ultimately be resolved by the lending community, Jarvis said.
He advised troubled homeowners to seek help right away by calling the state’s foreclosure hot line or the local home center. Its trained counselors act as a buffer between lender and delinquent borrower.
“There are more resources available now than there were three years ago,” Jarvis said. “Get busy early if you think you have a problem.”
