LACCM Partners with Social Service Agency on Foreclosure Crisis

MetroWest Daily News

By Peter Reuell/Daily News staff

 

FRAMINGHAM – Ask anyone who has ever lost a home and they will tell you the experience can be wrenching, emotionally and financially.

 

A new center that opened yesterday at the South Middlesex Opportunity Council’s 300 Howard St. headquarters is hoped to help homeowners avoid that fate.

 

The Foreclosure Prevention Office, part of the agency’s Housing Services Center, is aimed at offering help to low-income homeowners with “sub-prime” mortgages in danger of losing their homes.

 

Created through a grant from the state’s Division of Housing and Community Development and the Division of Banks, the center will connect homeowners with legal help through South Middlesex Legal Services, and negotiate with banks to allow residents to keep their homes, SMOC Executive Director Jim Cuddy said yesterday.

 

“Many communities are being destabilized because of foreclosure,” Cuddy told a crowd of nearly 50 bankers and housing advocates who attended yesterday’s opening. “The MetroWest region has a fairly strong economy, but this is a way to keep it strong, by keeping people in their homes.”

 

With the legal help offered through the center, homeowners may be able to negotiate payment plans with mortgage holders, SMOC officials said, or take other steps, like adding a person to a mortgage.

 

The center is funded through a $50,000 grant, but it is expected to become a permanent program with annual funding of about $200,000.

 

A similar program will be offered several days a week in the Milford area with the assistance of the Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts, officials said.

 

Also on hand for the center’s opening was SMOC Board member Jim Hanrahan.

 

“There are many people affected by this throughout the commonwealth, and MetroWest is no different,” he said. “With our team of partners here in this room, I think we’re going to be able to make a difference.”

 

South Middlesex Legal Services attorney Megan Christopher said the center will bring much-needed stability to families who are “teetering on the edge.”

 

“This is a period of time of extraordinary economic instability that is having an impact on the least fortunate among us,” she said.

 

For advocates like Ozzy Diagne, the director of SMOC’s Housing Services Center, the new office means a chance to offer homeowners even more services than before.

 

“Day in, day out, we work to help people,” he said. “It’s very difficult when you cannot give them everything you want to.”

 

(Peter Reuell can be reached at 508-626-4428, or preuell@cnc.com.)