Home Saver Forced To Close Doors
Phil Colozzi worries most about the mothers struggling to recover from abuse, abandonment.
Who will help them after he’s gone?
“No one else does what I do,” he says.
“That’s the crime of it.”
The nonprofit mortgage foreclosure prevention program Phil has run in North Idaho for nearly six years runs out of money at the end of the year. He’s already stopped taking on new clients, which is too bad for a lot of people.
Phil’s prevented about 350 foreclosures in the five northern counties since the Northwest Area Foundation granted him $300,000 in 1991.
“He’s stepped in and worked out repayment plans between borrowers and our department,” says Marnie Anderson, a representative of the Idaho Housing Agency in Boise. “He’s done a good service.”
He’s saved homes for desperate women who borrowed from private lenders with impossible terms and for families struggling to survive on seasonal jobs. Some clients have squandered their money. Divorce or a death in the family have sabotaged others.
“People of all income levels come to me,” he says. “I have a dozen $200,000 homes in foreclosure right now. They blew their money.”
His Philadelphia tough-guy accent surely raises visions of loan sharks when first-time callers contact his office. His no-nonsense clip carries a clear message to the down and out: Don’t waste my time unless you’re ready to change.
That approach has yielded results. But, Phil’s not unsympathetic. Thirty-five years as a financial consultant taught him how little some people know about their money. His close connection to his church taught him to forgive and help.
“You’re supposed to share your time, your talent and your treasures with others,” he says. “I’m not sorry I did this. I’ve been a very happy man the last five years.”
Phil was a Coeur d’Alene business consultant when the foreclosure prevention opportunity arose. He was earning a comfortable living working comfortable hours, but gave it all up to direct the nonprofit program for $36,000 a year.
The $300,000 grant covered three years. His only direction was to save homes.
Sixty people called Phil his first day on the job. Most were homeowners in trouble, but some were renters with serious financial troubles. He tried to help everyone.
“We don’t teach people how to budget money in our schools,” Phil says. “Most people made their own beds.”
He began by analyzing each client’s finances. One man spent more than a hundred dollars a month on cigarettes and couldn’t make his house payments.
Another struggling homeowner bought a trailer with money he’d borrowed at 28 percent annual interest. He put up his home as collateral.
“People don’t think things out,” Phil says, a little exasperated. “And they don’t understand that sometimes you have to wait for what you want.”
After showing clients where their money was going, he brought them together with their lenders. Most lenders are willing to negotiate rather than end up in court, he says.
Northwest Area Foundation liked Phil’s results and granted him another $110,000 in 1994 and $50,000 in 1996.
When he wasn’t teaching people to budget or mediating payment talks, Phil was sheltering the homeless. He saved houses from demolition for shelters.
He urged people to donate old homes and he even raised the money to move entire houses to donated property. He rented those homes for low amounts, mostly to single mothers trying to pull their lives together.
Phil, who’s 57, will continue his volunteer work for the homeless after his grant runs out.
But he’ll have to return to private business to support himself, which will leave him little time to counsel drowning homeowners.
Characteristically, he’s planned ahead.
He’s just finishing a workbook, “Budget My Money, Are You Nuts?” that should help anyone who can count.
He’s hoping to sell it through local bookstores this fall.
And he’s not giving up hope that someone will bail out the foreclosure prevention program. With foreclosure filings climbing in Kootenai County from 109 in 1995 to nearly 300 last year and at least as many this year, the area can’t afford to lose the single program that offers homeowners help.
“We don’t even have a HUD (Housing and Urban Development) counseling service in North Idaho,” Phil says, unable to understand how anyone could neglect something as significant to the economy as homeownership.
“North Idaho can’t afford to lose this.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo