Homeowner funds headed Pa.'s way

Seven months after the government announced a $1 billion plan to help jobless homeowners stave off foreclosure, Pennsylvania is finally getting the $105.8 million it had been promised.

In fact, Pennsylvania will be the first of the 27 states participating in the Emergency Homeowners Loan Program to begin processing applications, starting this month.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Friday that the state Housing Finance Agency's 28-year-old Homeowners Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program, known as HEMAP, is "substantially similar" to the federal program, "thereby allowing Pennsylvania to begin implementing the program itself."

The federal effort actually was modeled after the state program, which has helped more than 45,000 unemployed homeowners keep their houses since the early 1980s.

For the unemployed, their advocates, local officials, and the state Housing Finance Agency, which will administer the Emergency Homeowners Loan Program and had been wondering when it would see the money, the HUD announcement was welcome.

"The $105.8 million means real help for real people, and it comes at an appropriate time, as hundreds of Pennsylvania homeowners are facing imminent foreclosure," said Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.).

Because New Jersey's foreclosure rate exceeds the nation's, it has already received $112.2 million under the government's separate Hardest Hit Fund and is using it to roll out its Homekeeper program for unemployed and underemployed homeowners.

Advocates for Pennsylvania's unemployed had been pressing local HUD officials about the funding.

On March 25, John Dodds of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project and 100 jobless homeowners facing foreclosure had a rally at the local HUD office, seeking answers.

In December, Dodds' group used the promise of the emergency-loan program's funding to persuade Common Pleas Court President Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe to postpone sheriff's sales that would have included up to 1,600 homes of jobless Philadelphians.

Dembe declined requests for a continued postponement, and sheriff's sales are set to resume this week. In a compromise, no deed will be issued for 90 days after the sale at auction of a foreclosed home whose owner could be eligible for the program.

At a meeting with housing counselors Tuesday at the Philadelphia Fed, Richard Ott, deputy director of HUD's regional homeownership center overseeing activities in 15 states, was asked again about the program.