a package of bills<\/a> aimed at strengthening homeowner protections.<\/p>\n\u201cTogether, these efforts reflect a broader approach to protecting homeownership: strengthening our laws, investing in the services homeowners rely on, and making those resources easier to access,\u201d Williams said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The package of 10 bills includes an array of approaches to the issues homeowners face. One bill would require individuals to be enrolled in city-created property tax payment plans to help avoid missed payments.<\/p>\n
Another would require financial literacy advisers to serve at older adult centers \u2014 housing counselors observe that many foreclosures come from a lack of estate planning.<\/p>\n
A third bill would establish a public outreach and education program to inform struggling homeowners of the assistance available to them.<\/p>\n
Joseph Rebella is a \u200asupervising attorney of the Homeownership Protection Project at the Legal Aid Society in the Bronx. He helps run the weekly housing clinics at the Bronx County civil courthouse.<\/p>\n
Not all of the bills help protect people from losing their homes, Rebella said.<\/p>\n
Some, Rebella said, are \u201caimed at sort of discrete issues which are problems but that don’t necessarily contribute to the volume of foreclosure or housing turnover.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, he said, most seem like good ideas.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aA lot of those bills involve connecting people to the services that already exist,\u201d Rebella said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing negative to be said about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another proposal would add more than $500,000 to the Homeowner Stabilization Services Initiative, a newly established fund that supports organizations that provide legal and financial assistance to homeowners or those looking to buy. If passed, it would bring the budget for the program to about $5.69 million for the 2027 fiscal year.<\/p>\n
Gladstone Johnson, the executive director of the Bronx Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit organization that includes a foreclosure prevention program, said that increased funding would be \u201cthe major fix for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aWe’re not asking [the homeowners] for any money,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe need more funding so that we can hire some more staff and reach out to more of these homeowners.\u201d<\/p>\n
The need for Johnson\u2019s services has skyrocketed in recent years, he said. The Center for New York City Neighborhoods refers people to his organization for housing counseling.<\/p>\n
In a typical year, Johnson said, he would usually receive 15 referrals to their foreclosure program. This year, the Center referred 60 people to him \u2014 more than four times the usual caseload \u2014 before the year even comes to a close.<\/p>\n
Big bills, big worries<\/p>\n
The homeowner legal assistance clinics at the courthouse in the Bronx is a similar scene. The clinic is run out of a brightly lit room down a hallway with wood paneling, where yellow signs and arrows point toward the legal clinic.<\/p>\n
Attorneys from the Legal Aid Society, New York Legal Assistance Group, and Legal Services NYC all help run the programming every Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.<\/p>\n
Anthony James came to the clinic this week for legal counsel after he said he received a letter in the mail about falling behind on his mounting debt. James was sitting on top of an $80,000 bill from Con Edison \u2014 he shared the invoice with Gothamist \u2014 on top of another nearly $80,000 still left on the mortgage of his four-dwelling house, which is worth over $1 million.<\/p>\n
James told the attorney on duty, Martha de Jesus, the director of Neighborhood Stabilization Project at Bronx Legal Services, that there is no way he could make the $7,000 mortgage payments he owes the bank.<\/p>\n
De Jesus asked detailed questions about his income, his expenses, and the tenants who are living in his dwellings. She pulled up his property records, having to hotspot herself on an iPad after giving up on the Wi-Fi in her office \u2014 \u201cwe\u2019re not made of money here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She gave James strict instructions to return next week with additional materials, including bank statements. She would help make him a budget and game plan that could help him save his home.<\/p>\n
De Jesus said James\u2019 case can be a success story \u2014 he is one of the few who came in before he was issued a mandatory court hearing. And while James\u2019 debt is mounting, de Jesus explained that he still has more than $200,000 in equity on his home.<\/p>\n
The challenge now, she said, will be to find a way for him to be able to afford his costly monthly payments. But, she said, \u201cwe have time to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Fenelon, she said her experience fighting for her home has been \u201cincredibly humbling.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, after applying seven different times for the city\u2019s \u201cOne Shot Deal,\u201d the city\u2019s emergency cash assistance program, she has finally been accepted, and her application is pending final approval.<\/p>\n
Fenelon said the deal will hopefully provide her with a grant to pay off the remaining balance \u2014 she said $9,000 \u2014 on her home, and this nightmare will finally be over.<\/p>\n
Now, she said she notices people all over the Bronx facing foreclosure.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if prices are going up, but [foreclosure] is everywhere,\u201d Fenelon said.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, she said, \u201cI have the opportunity to keep my home. Some people just don\u2019t have it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kimberly Fenelon and her daughter were making snowmen in the front yard of her home in Hunts Point,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10],"class_list":["post-368804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}