Some Needed Foreclosure Relief
By Albert B. Kelly
If you listen to the Wall Street folks for any length of
time, you would think our housing troubles are over. While housing in major
markets like San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, or Dallas may be getting
traction these days that traction hasn’t made it way to many New Jersey
communities, especially South Jersey.
That doesn’t come as a huge shock; positive national trends
come slowly to many of our smaller communities and rural areas if they come at
all. When these trends do come, it’s usually some type of “trickle down” effect
and like trickle-down economics generally, there’s very little improvement.
Such is the case with our housing market and foreclosures.
The story coming out of Wall Street says that the foreclosure crisis is
yesterday’s news. But in many communities, we are still in the middle of that
storm.
According to the data, New Jersey had one of the highest
foreclosure rates in the country. As of March 2017, one in every 497 housing
units had some type of foreclosure filing. In Cumberland County, that number
was 1 in every 357 housing units, 1 in every 210 for Gloucester County and 1 in
every 252 for Salem County.
A little closer to home, Bridgeton had roughly 460
properties in some type of foreclosure activity (i.e. default, auction, or bank-owned)
in March 2017, while the number of homes that received a foreclosure filing was
44% higher than it was in February. The real kicker is that these numbers are
80% higher than the same time last year.
These numbers don’t happen in a vacuum; among the 216
metropolitan statistical areas with a population of at least 200,000, those
with the highest foreclosure rates in March 2017 were Trenton (one in every 355
housing units with a foreclosure filing); Atlantic City, (one in every 452
housing units), and Philadelphia (one in every 577 housing units).
In Bridgeton, roughly 5.6% of our residential units (389) were
vacant as of the end of 2016 and it is a safe bet that a good number of these
units made up part of the 460 properties that were touched in some way by
foreclosure.
Foreclosures do damage in our neighborhoods by lowering the
value of any surrounding properties and this leads to its own problems. Vacant
properties are magnets for crime and vandalism and this furthers a cycle of
decay and instability.
And that doesn’t even touch on the human impact, which is
significant. For every family that is removed from a home in foreclosure, there
is likely a child that gets hauled out of their school and away from friends.
For those that stay in homes where they owe more on the
mortgage than the house is worth, they likely face many financial struggles and
with a house with no equity, it doesn’t take much to push them over the edge and
into foreclosure.
That’s why I was glad to come across the nonprofit SUN foreclosure
program (Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods) which helps people behind in their
mortgage payments or facing foreclosure. The program helps homeowners who are
behind on their mortgage payments to repurchase their homes under a new
mortgage that they can afford.
According to SUN, since 2009, they have helped upwards of
800 families keep their homes by lowering their mortgages (principal balances
and monthly payments) by about 35% on average.
SUN, a 30-year-old nonprofit community development financial
institution that is part of Boston Community Capital, works with the banks and
attorneys to stop the eviction process, purchase foreclosed properties at
distressed market values, and resells those properties to their current
occupants at a serious discount off the prior mortgage.
SUN’s goal is to provide foreclosed homeowners who have a
stable income, with a new 30-year fixed rate mortgage they can afford. This
process works especially well for homeowners who are “underwater” on their
mortgages.
With so much at stake for our residents personally and for
the health and stability of the Bridgeton community more generally, I encourage
anyone who is facing foreclosure to take the time and reach out to SUN to see
if they can help.
To learn more about the program or for more information,
call SUN 855-604-4663 or visit www.SUNhomehelp.org
- there is no fee to apply- the SUN
program welcomes applications from any resident in New Jersey.
You can also find information about SUN on the City of
Bridgeton website by visiting http://www.cityofbridgeton.com/SUNForeclosureRelief.php