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http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/sfh/hcc/hcs.cfm?webListAction=search&searchstate=VA
Author: CARY POWELL MOSELEY
ANGLERS RIDGE / DANVILLE IS #1 AGAIN
THE ITALIAN STALLION! VINNY DEL NEGRO AT ACC TOURNEY 2015
PREDATORY LENDING: PAYDAY LOANS AND CAR TITLE LOANS
Consumer Protection Agency Seeks Limits on Payday Lenders
In the world of consumer finance, they are chameleons: payday lenders that alter their practices and shift their products ever so slightly to work around state laws aimed at stamping out short-term loans that can come with interest rates exceeding 300 percent.
Such maneuvers by the roughly $46 billion payday loan industry, state regulators say, have frustrated their efforts to protect consumers.
Now, for the first time, a federal regulator is entering the fray, drafting regulations that could sharply reduce the number of unaffordable loans that lenders can make.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created after the 2008 financial crisis, will soon release the first draft of federal regulations to govern a wide range of short-term loans.
The rules are expected to address expensive credit backed by car titles and some installment loans that stretch longer than the traditional two-week payday loan, according to industry lawyers, consumer groups and government authorities briefed on the discussions who all spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are private. Certain installment loans, for example, with interest rates that exceed 36 percent, the people said, will most likely be covered by the rules.
Behind that decision, the people said, is a stark acknowledgment of just how successfully lenders have adapted to keep offering high-cost products despite state laws meant to rein in the loans.
The federal regulations taking shape will most likely set off a new round of lobbying from payday lenders.
For now, with the prospect of federal rules on the horizon, some payday lenders have begun aggressively lobbying a number of states, including, Kentucky, Washington and New Mexico, tapping a former governor as a lobbyist in one battle, to weaken state laws restricting expensive loans or to quash new caps before they gain ground.
The lenders contend that if the federal rules are too burdensome, extending loans would become simply too expensive, choking off a form of credit that, while costly, is the only option for millions of Americans.
“What payday lending reflects is the fact that the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck,” said Donald C. Lampe, a partner at the law firm Morrison & Foerster, who advises payday lenders. “Just punishing payday lenders is not going to prevent Americans from needing short-term products.”
It is not only the industry that has much at stake. The rules, a major initiative for the consumer bureau, will test the mettle of an agency that faces an increasingly skeptical Republican Congress, including some officials who have called for it to be dismantled.
An account of how the rules are coalescing, pieced together through interviews with the people briefed on the matter, helps to illustrate the high-wire act facing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, led by Richard Cordray, as it works to keep to its original mandate to shield consumers from lending abuses.
With its promise of fast cash to anyone regardless of credit history, the payday lending industry, perhaps more than any other, speaks to a growing desperation among the working poor who have virtually no savings and who cannot get bank loans.
The median income of payday loan borrowers was just over $22,400 a year, according to an analysis of roughly 15 million payday loans by the consumer bureau, leaving many struggling. Nearly 70 percent of borrowers use the loans to cover basic expenses, with only 16 percent tapping the loans for emergencies, the Pew Charitable Trust found.
That precarious financial footing helps explain how a single loan — say, $350 — can spiral, with a snarl of fees that exceed the amount first borrowed.
At the center of the regulations being considered, the people familiar with the matter said, is a requirement that lenders assess whether borrowers can repay loans — interest and principal — at the end of a two-week period by examining their income, other debts and their payment history.
Few people can, the data suggest, leaving borrowers to either roll over their loans, heaping on more fees, or take out new ones altogether. The bureau found that during a 12-month period, borrowers took out a median of 10 loans. Borrowers paid median fees of $458. The median amount borrowed was $350. And more than 80 percent of loans were rolled over or renewed within two weeks.
That churn is central to many lenders’ business, according to data from the bureau. Borrowers who take out 11 or more loans each year account for roughly 75 percent of the fees generated.
“Much of the business model is based on repeat borrowers,” said Michael D. Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending.
In hashing out the rules, the people said, the bureau has been wrestling with how to guard against that cycle while preserving some form of credit.
The expected underwriting requirements, the people briefed on the discussions said, would become increasingly stringent when borrowers apply for a second loan within a certain time period — most likely more than a month — before repaying their first.
An alternative underwriting requirement under consideration, the people said, would require that lenders provide additional protections, that could include limiting the size and duration of the loan, to ensure that borrowers can repay them without plunging further into debt. The rules being considered, those briefed on the discussions said, would limit the number of times a lender could roll over a borrower’s loan during a 12-month period.
Lenders may also be required to provide a so-called off-ramp, of repaying the debt. Also expected under the rules are limits on the number of times that lenders can gain access to a borrower’s checking account.
Among the most hotly debated parts of the rules, the people briefed on the discussions said, are just what kinds of loans fall under the guidelines. Some lenders, they said, have pushed to keep the definition narrow, arguing that car title loans and installment loans should escape the crackdown.
The decision to include those forms of credit, the people said, could represent a significant defeat for the payday industry, especially because some lenders, responding to shifts in the regulatory landscape, have shifted to offer those loans. Shortly after Arizona effectively banned payday loans, for example, ACE Cash Express began registering its storefronts as car-title lenders.
Still, the fight is hardly over. Payday lenders have renewed their efforts to win exemptions from laws restricting the loans, according to state records. In Washington State, which prevents borrowers from taking out more than eight loans in a 12-month period, lawmakers backed by payday lenders have introduced two bills. One, for example, would double the number of loans allowed in a year.
The push has incited new concerns among consumer advocates and state regulators that payday lenders will seize on the federal rules to undermine tougher state restrictions like those in New York, which caps rates at 16 percent.
Still, for the millions of people in the 35 states that have no such limits, new federal rules may provide some protections.
They are people like Eboni Maze, 32, who works for a cruise line in Wichita, Kan., and says that a single loan — money borrowed against her car, a 2012 Kia, so she could pay her rent — still haunts her more than three years later. Her car was repossessed after she could not keep up with the payments on the loan, which had an interest rate of more than 150 percent. To afford the down payment on another car, she took out a payday loan. When she could not pay that one off, she took out another.
“Honestly, I call it a black hole,” she said.
ELDER FRAUD SEMINAR
file:///C:/Users/Cary/Downloads/HG%20FLYER%20ElderFraud.pdf
ELDER FRAUD SEMINAR
Friday, February 27, 2015 at 2:00 pm
at Heritage Green
Guest Speaker: Cary Powell Moseley, Attorney at Law
Are you an easy target?
Scams targeting seniors are everywhere! You can protect yourself or your loved
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Refreshments provided.
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ROY STEINHEIMER / APRIL 17 TO 19, 2015 / WASHINGTON AND LEE LAW
Dear W&L Law School Alumni:
We are following up on our message from last week about the passing of former dean Roy Steinheimer at age 98. Many of you have asked about memorial services and other arrangements. We have learned from the family that it was Dean Steinheimer’s wish that there be no funeral or memorial service.
However, we are planning a tribute during our upcoming Alumni Weekend, April 17-19, in Lexington. More details will follow as they become available.
In the meantime, you can read more about his remarkable life and legacy in the press release on the University website. We have also posted some photos of the dean from our archives on our Facebook page. Feel free to share your memories of Dean Steinheimer there in the comments area.
ROY STEINHEIMER / PRESS RELEASE
Roy L. Steinheimer Jr., Former W&L Law School Dean, Dies at 98
Posted on January 9, 2015 by Julie Campbell
Roy Lee Steinheimer Jr., the dean of the Washington and Lee University School of Law from 1968 to 1983, and the Robert E.R. Huntley Professor of Law Emeritus at W&L, died on Thursday, Jan. 8, in Lexington. He was 98.
“Roy Steinheimer’s deanship was a pivotal one for Washington and Lee’s Law School,” said W&L President Ken Ruscio. “He left a genuine legacy, and more than any other individual shaped the Law School that exists today. His contributions were profound, and we shall be forever grateful for his service and dedication to the University.”
During Steinheimer’s landmark tenure as dean, the Law School moved into its current headquarters, Lewis Hall, welcomed its first women students, further diversified its student body, and strengthened its national profile.
“Dean Steinheimer made the Law School a truly national institution and provided it with a vision for teaching, scholarship and professional service,” said Nora V. Demleitner, the dean of the W&L Law School and the Roy L. Steinheimer Jr. Professor of Law. “Personally, I consider it the greatest honor and a powerful responsibility to be the Steinheimer Professor. It is not only his vision as a dean but also his impact as a teacher that lives on through our graduates.”
Roy L. Steinheimer Jr. was born on Dec. 2, 1916, in Dodge City, Kansas, to Roy L. Steinheimer Sr. and Nettie E. Steinheimer. He grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas. He received his A.B. in economics in 1937 from the University of Kansas and his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1940. He practiced law with Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City for 10 years before returning to the University of Michigan, where he taught from 1950 to 1968.
“Early on, I was interested in what lawyers did,” he told W&L Law magazine in 2002. “When I was in high school, I would slip into the courtroom in town and sit in on trials.”
Steinheimer came to W&L in 1968 as dean, and after his 1983 retirement from that post continued to teach at W&L. In 1984, he spent a semester at the University of Alabama as the first occupant of the John Sparkman Distinguished Professorship. In 1985, he was named the Robert E.R. Huntley Professor of Law at W&L and taught commercial transactions and consumer protection. He retired from W&L in 1987. From 1989 to 1999, however, he served as an adjunct professor of law.
When he took the dean’s post, Steinheimer told Robert E.R. Huntley, then president of W&L (and his predecessor as dean of the Law School), that the school needed to admit women. Four years later, seven women began their legal education at W&L. “I think it is fair to say that the whole climate in our law school and the spirit in our law school and the educational process in our law school has benefited substantially from the presence of women in our little law school community,” he told the W&L alumni magazine in 1985. He made the active recruitment of minority students another one of his main goals.
Steinheimer also nurtured the personal atmosphere of the Law School. “I thought we could turn out finer professional people if we got to know them and were in constant contact with them,” he told W&L Law in 2010, “so that the professionalism that we as professors had could rub off on them.”
Huntley, who served as law dean from 1967 to 1968 before becoming president of W&L, in 1983 lauded Steinheimer’s deanship. “Our faculty, our curriculum, and our student body have been strengthened in every dimension,” he wrote in the W&L Law Review. Huntley also called him “one of the finest teachers” and “one of those rare persons who is able to combine toughness of mind with compassion of spirit.”
Another signal accomplishment of Steinheimer’s tenure as dean was the construction of Lewis Hall, the spacious, up-to-date headquarters for the Law School that opened in 1977.
Steinheimer’s primary field was commercial law. He served on the Uniform Commercial Code committees of the American and Michigan state bar associations and lectured widely on the code. He belonged to the American Bar Association, American Arbitration Association and American Law Institute.
In 1970, he headed a White House task force that investigated ways to explain the American legal system to children.
He also belonged to the honorary societies of Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa and Order of the Coif.
Steinheimer wrote many articles and books, including the two-volume “Uniform Commercial Code Forms with Practice Comments” (1969) and the two-volume “Desk Reference to the Uniform Commercial Code” (1964).
In addition to his professional accomplishments, he had a reputation for fair and caring leadership at W&L. “When he was playing pool with you, or golf, he could be perfectly one of the fellows,” said Sam Calhoun, W&L professor of law and associate dean, in 2002. “But as dean there was some distance there. I think that’s the style of some gifted leaders.”
“He had the instincts of a builder,” said Lewis “Lash” LaRue, the W&L Class of 1958 Alumni Professor of Law Emeritus, in 2002. “He came to the Law School with a vision, and he won support very quickly. The faculty trusted him to do what needed to be done. He was persuasive and impressive.”
As a tribute upon his retirement from the deanship, the law faculty established the Roy L. Steinheimer Jr. Commercial Law Award, which W&L gives each year to the graduating law student who has compiled the most outstanding record in commercial law. In 1984, alumni and friends created the Roy L. Steinheimer Jr. Professorship in Law.
Sally Wiant, professor of law at W&L and one of the first women to enroll at W&L’s Law School, called him in 2002 “a man bigger than life, a man with unquestioned integrity, a man willing to take risks for the good of the school, a man of strong convictions, and a man of such warmth.”
He received yet another honor when he stepped down from the dean’s post: Law students commissioned an artist to paint a portrait of Steinheimer, which now hangs in Lewis Hall.
“He has led by his unerring commitment to integrity,” Andrew W. McThenia Jr., the James P. Morefield Professor of Law Emeritus at W&L, wrote in the W&L Law Review in 1983. “Credibility, coherence and certainty are words he uses often. The base element of each of those and the glue that holds them together is his integrity. His tenure has been in the best sense of the word, that of a gentleman.”
In addition to his teaching and administrative reputations, Steinheimer was as well known for his colorful sportcoats as he was for his oft-repeated answer to faculty requests, “My hands are tied,” and for the well-known slogan that an unknown law professor coined after hearing that answer: “I’ve been Royed.”
Known as “The Sky Dean,” he piloted a Beech Bonanza airplane until he was 76 years old over the skies of the East Coast on recruitment trips. He also flew in Alaska, the Caribbean, Central America and South America. And he raised sheep both in Michigan and Virginia.
Steinheimer married Jane Powell Patchett in 1949; she died in 1982. He married Frances Pugh in 1988; she died in 2008. He is survived by Frances Pugh Steinheimer’s daughters, Sarah Pugh Dicks ’86L and Susan Pugh Morten.
Per Steinheimer’s wishes, there will be no funeral or memorial service.
This entry was posted in Featured, Law Alumni, Law Home, Law Press Releases, Obituary, School of Law.
REST IN PEACE, ROY STEINHEIMER
January 9, 2015
Washington and Lee School of Law
Dear W&L Law School Alumni:
Below is a message sent out by President Ruscio to the campus this afternoon announcing the passing of Dean Roy Steinheimer. We will be touch with additional information about memorial services and additional tributes when it becomes available.
===================================================
I write with the sad news that Roy Lee Steinheimer Jr., the dean of the Washington and Lee University School of Law from 1968 to 1983, and the Robert E.R. Huntley Professor of Law Emeritus at W&L, died on Thursday, Jan. 8, in Lexington. He was 98.
Roy Steinheimer’s deanship was a pivotal one for Washington and Lee’s Law School. He left a genuine legacy, and more than any other individual shaped the Law School that exists today. His contributions were profound, and we shall be forever grateful for his service and dedication to the University.
During Roy’s landmark tenure as dean, the Law School moved into Lewis Hall, welcomed its first women students, further diversified its student body, and strengthened its national profile.
Roy was born on Dec. 2, 1916, in Dodge City, Kansas, to Roy L. Steinheimer Sr. and Nettie E. Steinheimer. He received his A.B. in 1937 from the University of Kansas and his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1940. He practiced law with Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City for 10 years before returning to the University of Michigan, where he taught from 1950 to 1968.
He came to W&L in 1968 as dean, and after his retirement from that post continued to teach here. In 1985, he was named the Robert E.R. Huntley Professor of Law and taught commercial transactions and consumer protection. He also spent a semester, in 1984, at the University of Alabama as the first occupant of the John Sparkman Distinguished Professorship. He retired from W&L in 1987.
Roy’s primary field was commercial law. He served on the Uniform Commercial Code committees of the American and Michigan state bar associations and lectured widely on the code. He belonged to the American Bar Association, American Arbitration Association and American Law Institute. In 1970, he headed a White House task force that investigated ways to explain the American legal system to children.
He also belonged to the honorary societies of Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa and Order of the Coif.
Roy wrote many articles and books, including the two-volume “Uniform Commercial Code Forms with Practice Comments” (1969) and the two-volume “Desk Reference to the Uniform Commercial Code” (1964).
Upon his retirement from the deanship in 1983, the law faculty established the Roy L. Steinheimer Jr. Commercial Law Award, which is given each year to the graduating student who has compiled the most outstanding record in commercial law. In 1984, alumni and friends created the Roy L. Steinheimer Jr. Professorship in Law.
When he stepped down from the dean’s post, law students commissioned an artist to paint portrait of Roy, which now hangs in Lewis Hall.
Roy was as well known for his colorful sportcoats as he was for his oft-repeated answer to faculty requests, “My hands are tied,” and for the well-known slogan that an unknown law professor coined after hearing that answer: “I’ve been Royed.”
Known as “The Sky Dean,” he piloted a Beech Bonanza until he was 76 over the skies of the East Coast on recruitment trips. He also flew in Alaska, the Caribbean, Central America and South America. And he raised sheep both in Michigan and Virginia.
He married Jane Powell Patchett in 1949; she died in 1982. Roy married Frances Pugh in 1988; she died in 2008. Roy is survived by Frances Pugh Steinheimer’s daughters, Sarah Pugh Dicks ’86L and Susan Pugh Morten.
Information about any memorial service will be posted when it becomes available, both on Campus Notices and in a longer obituary that will be on the W&L website.
Kim and I send our deepest condolences to Roy’s family, friends and the many law alumni who were fortunate enough to have counted him as a teacher and a mentor.
REST IN PEACE, CLAUDIA EMERSON
Claudia Emerson, Pulitzer-winning poet, dies at 57
Claudia Emerson, 57, received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2006.
Posted: Thursday, December 4, 2014 12:19 pm
By ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
Claudia Emerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate of Virginia, died early Thursday from complications associated with colon cancer. She was 57. Ms. Emerson had been a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University since 2013, but she made her name, and won her Pulitzer, while teaching at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. She was honored in 2006 for her collection “Late Wife” and later served as Virginia’s poet laureate from 2008 to 2010. She also won a 2011 Guggenheim fellowship, which she used to travel to Italy to pursue a poetry project about mummies. “I never knew what the soul of a poet was until I knew Claudia,” said former state Sen. Charles R. Hawkins, who’d known Ms. Emerson since her childhood in her native Chatham. “She was a loving soul, a creative mind and had the ability to express herself in ways not many of us can. This has hit us really hard down here.” Ms. Emerson credited her childhood in Southside Virginia with sparking an interest in writing that never subsided. “I may not always be the smartest person in the room, but I am the most curious,” she said in a September interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. For years, she did her exploring at Mary Washington, where she taught undergraduate students how to express themselves in words. “She had a deep, abiding love for her students and their success,” said Teresa Kennedy, an English professor at Mary Washington who was department chairwoman when Ms. Emerson was there. “A lot of people think of poetry as some kind of voodoo that has no rhyme or reason. She made it reasonable for her students.” Ms. Emerson moved to VCU in 2013 to work with graduate students. She was not on campus for long, but she made a fast, lasting impact. “Claudia Emerson was more than the sum of her many prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize,” Katherine Bassard, the chairwoman of the VCU Department of English, said in a statement. “She was simply the most alive, gracious, and courageous human being I have ever met. Incredibly funny and down to earth, she lived and loved life to the fullest. And she loved every minute of being at VCU. Her dedication to her students and her craft were unquestioned and she will be desperately missed by her family, friends, colleagues and students.” Jim Coleman, the dean of VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences, said the impact of Ms. Emerson’s loss would spread far and wide. “Claudia’s passing will not only be difficult for her family, friends, current and former students and colleagues, but I am saddened to think of the countless students who could have otherwise been transformed as people and as writers by her passion for teaching the art of poetry,” he said in a statement. “I feel an empty hole as I’m one of the thousands, if not millions of people, who, when we turn to literary arts for profound, joyful and meaningful journeys into what it means to be human, will yearn for just a little more of her amazing skill at creating mesmerizing, deeply honest and accessible art with words.” *** In the September interview with The Times-Dispatch, Ms. Emerson said she came to Richmond to escape the suburban sprawl creeping into Fredericksburg and to work with advanced students. Instead, she spent much of her time in Richmond battling colon cancer. “She had been treated for cancer in Fredericksburg and we thought that was cleared,” said her husband, Harry Kent Ippolito. “It came as such a surprise,” she said in September. “I’ve always been a really active person. I don’t know how to be frail.” Ms. Emerson spent most of her life being tough and independent. After earning a degree in English at the University of Virginia in 1979, she returned to Chatham and found herself driving a rural mail route. But at age 28, somewhere along that 86-mile route, she discovered who she really was. “I was a poet,” she said in her office at VCU, where she taught poetry in the English department. “Until then, I’d thought about writing songs or short stories. But I realized I was a poet.” With “an armor of naivety,” she said, she went back to college. In 1991, she earned a master’s degree in fine arts in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In the years since, she became one of the most honored, decorated and revered poets in Virginia history. “I think Claudia is one of the finest American poets of her generation,” David Wojahn, a creative writing instructor at VCU, said in September. “W.H. Auden said more poets fail for lack of character than lack of talent. Claudia has plenty of character.” Ms. Emerson called winning the Pulitzer a complete surprise. “It’s just not one of those things you think about,” she said. “It brought a lot of attention. I was happy with my career before.” While Ms. Emerson lived in Richmond briefly, the move proved to be a creative spark. She completed two volumes of new poetry, both of which are scheduled to be published by the Louisiana State University press next year. When those come out, she will have had seven published volumes. The last, she said in September, includes material related to her battle against cancer and was the toughest to write. “I was always a healthy, active person,” she said. “I loved long-distance running. Now I don’t think I could walk a mile and a half.” Emerson’s creative output includes “Late Wife,” published in 2005; “Pharaoh, Pharaoh” (1997); “Pinion: An Elegy” (2002), “Figure Studies: Poems” (2008); and “Secure the Shadow” (2012). “The Opposite House” is scheduled to be published in March, and Emerson’s last collection should come out next fall. Two more Emerson collections, “Impossible Bottle” and another untitled one, are expected to be published, her husband said. Other survivors include her mother, Mollie Emerson of Chatham. Arrangements are incomplete for memorial services to be held at Second Presbyterian Church in Richmond and Chatham Presbyterian Church in Chatham.
zreid@timesdispatch.com (804) 775-8179
UM, DIDN’T OBAMA PROMISE TO DO THIS FOR US? FORECLOSURES AND THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN
Smart program saves homeowners from foreclosure
By Michelle Singletary Columnist October 18
Lisa Shepard followed the rules.
She got a good education. She became a registered nurse and then got a law degree. Her schooling led to a good job in health-care management. She bought a home she could afford in Jessup. She lived within her means.
Michelle Singletary writes the nationally syndicated personal finance column, “The Color of Money.”
Then the recession hit. We spiraled into a housing crisis that sank the financially irresponsible and those who were preyed upon by predatory lenders. But it also dragged down people like Shepard, who lost her job in 2011.
“I went from six figures to no figures,” says Shepard, 52, who is the caregiver for her 10-year-old daughter as well as her ailing 72-year-old father.
Shepard worked several jobs for which she was often overqualified to try to bring in enough money to cover her mortgage and other bare-bones expenses, she says. It wasn’t until 2013 that she became gainfully employed again. And by the time she found that job, her home had gone into foreclosure.
But this story isn’t just about Shepard. It’s about the many people who are still facing foreclosure, many through no fault of their own.
In September, foreclosure filings were down 19 percent from a year ago, the lowest level since July 2006, according to RealtyTrac. However, filings were up slightly for the third quarter, with 22 states posting year-over-year increases in scheduled foreclosure auctions. Florida, Maryland and New Jersey had the highest foreclosure rates in the third quarter.
“A recent rise in scheduled foreclosure auctions in many markets across the country shows lenders are continuing to clean house of lingering delinquent loans,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac.
So what’s the best strategy to help people keep their homes?
The housing crisis was so deep and troubling that we need to be open to helping homeowners in various ways. Even then, many people, still struggling to bring in enough income, may have to let their homes be foreclosed upon. Others in better situations may best be served by getting a loan modification. In some cases, it might be necessary to reduce people’s principals, bringing their mortgages in line with current market prices.
And then there’s the innovative solution that helped Shepard save her home. She was one of the first homeowners in Maryland to be rescued from foreclosure through the Boston Community Capital Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods Initiative, known as SUN. It’s an amazing program that specifically targets folks such as Shepard who are back on their feet financially and can afford to stay in their homes if the price is right.
Under the program, the nonprofit organization negotiates with the homeowner’s lender to purchase the home at the current market value. The group then sells the home to the existing homeowner with a more affordable fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage. To qualify for the program, the home has to be in foreclosure or about to be in foreclosure or the homeowners have to be awaiting eviction because of a foreclosure. You have to have a steady income that can support a mortgage. There is no fee to apply.
The program began in Massachusetts but has expanded to Maryland and Rhode Island. It should be in more states. So far, more than 500 families facing foreclosure have been able to reduce their monthly mortgage payments and principal balances by average of 38 percent.
SUN cut Shepard’s 30-year mortgage from $352,218 to $273,000 and her monthly payments from $2,433 to $2,037. It was enough of a break to make her mortgage affordable. Shepard was referred to the SUN program by the HUD-approved home counseling agency HomeFree-USA after previous attempts failed to modify her mortgage.
“We recognized she clearly had been financially responsible prior to her hardship,” said Phyllis Ellis, vice president of Home Ownership Preservation for HomeFree. “Even though the servicer wouldn’t take her [partial] payments, she still put the money aside. That is the key. She exhibited financial responsibility. She showed she really did want to save her home.”
The end goal is to “help stabilize a family and neighborhood,” said Elyse Cherry, the chief executive of Boston Community Capital and the founder of the SUN Program.
Some states have been better than others in responding to foreclosure problems. Maryland embraced SUN a year ago because it gave the state yet another tool to help homeowners, said Reginald Stanfield, a director in the Office of Community Programs at the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development.
“We are more than willing to look at things that are innovative and forward-thinking,” Stanfield said in an interview. “The bottom line is the health of your neighborhood and local community is attached to this issue.”
That’s exactly the thinking we need to reduce the pipeline of foreclosures still resulting from the recession.
“This house is our foundation,” Shepard said. “The SUN program has allowed me to come through the storm and remain stable. It’s best to keep people where they are if they can afford it.”
Yes, it is. It’s best for all of us.
Write to Michelle Singletary at The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071 or singletarym@washpost.com. Comments or questions may be used in a future column, with the writer’s name, unless otherwise requested.
To read more, go to http://wapo.st/michelle-singletary.
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