By Phil Phren

Syracuse United Neighbors

Syracuse, New York

At a public meeting in December, members of Syracuse United Neighbors (SUN) pushed Mayor Matt Driscoll to make a commitment to the low-income neighborhoods of the south and near west sides of the city that were facing high foreclosure rates.

SUN’s Banking Committee conducted a survey of foreclosures in those communities and found 308 in a two-year period, many due to predatory loans. Every three days, an owner-occupant in SUN’s neighborhoods loses a home to foreclosure.

At the meeting, SUN’s leaders presented Driscoll with three common sense solutions to rebuild crumbling housing, and reduce the number of abandoned houses in their communities:

• Board up vacant houses to prevent burglary and vandalizing;
• Create a mortgatge defualt counseling program to save families in danger of losing their homes to foreclosures; and
• Devote more city money to families for home repairs and to rehab abandoned houses.

At first SUN’s demands were met with vague statements of sympathy by Driscoll.

”We don’t care if you feel our pain,” said Louise Poindexter, a member of SUN’s Housing Leadership Team. “We want you to do something about it!”

Apparently, Driscoll took Poindexter’s statement to heart.
In his State of the City address one month later, Driscoll announced that the city had found $100,000 to fund the mortgage foreclosure intervention program that SUN proposed.

The mortgage default counseling program is based on a similar program in Rochester, N.Y. that saved 89 percent of its client’s homes.

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