Foreclosure Prevention Project

About the Program

Category: Civic Education and Public Information (Best in Category)

Year: 2009

As the nation’s economy has continued to spiral downward, the number of foreclosures upon homeowners has risen dramatically. This foreclosure crisis hit especially hard in Los Angeles County where, in the course of two years, the number of foreclosures rose from 2,206 in 2006 to 37,257 in 2008, a striking 1500% increase. In order to respond to the changing needs of Los Angeles county homeowners, the department developed the Foreclosure Prevention Project to provide enhanced services to its residents. The three primary components of the program were public information and outreach, counseling and loan modification assistance, and fraud investigation. As the need for information began to grow, the Department of Consumer Affairs took steps to make the information more accessible and to develop new content to deal with some of the latest issues that were arising. In order to get information into the hands of the people who needed it, new brochures were created and distributed to the public. Additionally, the county developed a homepage feature on foreclosures that brings together all of the department’s information in one easily accessible location which is immediately visible to anyone visiting the department website. The department also partnered with neighborhood housing services to conduct foreclosure workshops that addressed questions and provided additional information to citizens. In the past year alone, the county department provided over 1,600 people with foreclosure counseling, with the primary goal being to keep people in their homes. The department staff assisted in hundreds of loan modifications whereby they act as intermediaries between the lenders (usually a bank) and the homeowner. Adding to the difficulties that homeowners face during foreclosure are fraudulent consultants who victimize desperate people. In exploiting vulnerable residents’ situations, crooks offer fees to save a person’s home (ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars) then provide no service, leaving the victim in greater debt. In 2008, the department addressed this situation by discovering and investigating 104 cases of foreclosure fraud.