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A mission to save homes

Mary Chavis, right, shares some papers regarding her home in Queens, New York, with Deyanira Del Rio, of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project after a housing crisis workshop. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Verena Dobnik Associated Press
Mary Chavis, right, shares some papers regarding her home in Queens, New York, with Deyanira Del Rio, of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project after a housing crisis workshop. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

NEW YORK – The Rev. Jeffry Dillon switched from the religious to the secular on a recent Sunday morning to ask his parishioners a pointed question: “Do subprime mortgages scare you?”

Then he announced that the Roman Catholic parish, not far from JFK International Airport in Queens, was offering a workshop after Mass to help people in danger of losing their homes.

Embracing the religious tradition of helping the poor, pastors around the nation are doubling as financial shepherds for their mortgage-distressed flocks.

“What happens to the lives of people daily is important,” said Jean Beil, a spokeswoman for Catholic Charities USA. “God calls us to care for the poor.”

Nationwide, lenders filed foreclosure-related documents against almost 650,000 homes in the first three months of the year, more than double the number in the same period last year, according to California-based RealtyTrac Inc., which monitors the market across the country.

New York City saw more than 6,000 foreclosure filings in just the first three months of this year, out of more than 14,000 statewide – a 40 percent increase over last year, according to the New York State Banking Department. Brooklyn and Queens alone represented about a third of the state’s defaults, clustered in the boroughs’ minority neighborhoods.

In response to the crisis, 10 churches in Brooklyn and Queens have offered workshops this year to counsel anyone who shows up – church members or not – on how to avert foreclosure and the so-called predatory lending that can make financial victims of homeowners.

Around the country, Catholic Charities USA, the Alexandria, Va.-based umbrella group for its member relief agencies in various states, is running programs similar to the ones in New York. The national group says it’s helped more than 4,000 homeowners in a dozen communities from Atlanta to Santa Rosa, Calif.

While other religious groups or cultural associations have taken some steps, and various Christian denominations offer real estate advice, the Roman Catholic church seems to have made the largest concerted effort to address the foreclosure crisis.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation aimed at helping half a million homeowners facing possible foreclosure. President Bush has threatened to veto it, calling it a taxpayer-funded bailout.

At the recent workshop in Queens, parishioners at Christ the King Church filled out financial forms to prepare for appointments with counselors from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a national housing activist group.

Peggy Been, a 66-year-old registered nurse, refinanced her two-family home with her sister in 2005. They shared the monthly payment of $2,600 on the 30-year adjustable mortgage until the sister died in April 2006.

Been said the payments have risen to $3,000 and she can’t afford them on her $1,438 monthly Social Security check plus $900 from a renter. Now she’s been notified that the home is being repossessed by lenders. “I’m broke and I have nowhere to go,” Been said.