In housing crisis, a lifeboat for some
The Inland Empire is the 2nd hardest hit area in the whole nation for foreclosures.
I visited some SB offices Thursday where those on the lowest rungs of the housing market's deepest collapse wander in, glassy-eyed, for help.
ACORN's D Street offices don't charge anything, but they also don't have advertising, so they're still a bit of a secret.
But they are invaluable consultants and advocates for people who are totally overwhelmed in the housing morass. Most of the homeowners coming in know little about banking and fine print.
Maybe half speak only Spanish.
The service is available every Thursday. The number and address are in the story below ...
In danger of defaulting on your home loan? San Bernardino's ACORN office may be able to help.
ACORN offices are located at 1490 N. D St., and assessments and consultation services are provided for struggling homeowners every Thursday.
For more information or to make an appointment, call (909) 806-4715 or visit www.acorn.org/sanbernardino.
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By Robert Rogers
Staff Writer
SAN BERNARDINO -- They trudged into the spare offices, beaten but not broken.
Rigoberto Perez, a diesel mechanic, was dressed in his grease-splotched jeans and blue-collar button shirt, "Rigoberto" on a sewn patch over his heart.
His wife Maria looked fresher, her shift working for a satellite television company didn't start until later.
She handled most of the paperwork.
The Perezes, like thousands of San Bernardino county residents, are fighting the financial forces that threaten to sweep them from their home.
And there is one small stop north of downtown San Bernardino where more people, particularly Spanish-only speakers and people so strapped for cash their options are limited to free services, have begun to turn in recent months.
Since its Jan. 28 opening, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has drawn a steadily increasing number of imperiled homeowners each Thursday.
On Thursdays ACORN staff members offer appointments with homeowners facing foreclosure, doing a comprehensive financial assessment, laying out their options and initiating negotiations with finance companies to see if terms can be met that would allow the homeowner not to default on their loan, said ACORN community organizer Greg Lestikow.
"These are people who need help and who someone to advocate for them," Lestikow said.
Lestikow said ACORN has been able to help roughly one in five people negotiate new loan terms, helping them stave off foreclosure.
What started as a couple people wandering in weekly has increased to four to six on average, Lestikow said.
"The problem is outreach," he said. "We're known by word of mouth, while others perform a similar service for exorbitant fees."
The Perezes were typical of those who ACORN helps, two more faces on the numbing statistical dimensions of the county's foreclosure crisis.
Over the first three months of 2008, San Bernardino and Riverside counties ranked No. 2 nationally in foreclosures. In April, one of every 99 households received a foreclosure filing, according to Irvine-based real estate data company RealtyTrac.
Raising six children in Fontana, the Perezes are on the brink because monthly payments for the home they bought in 2005 leapt from about $1,400 to more than $3,500, Rigoberto said.
"We had no idea this would happen, we didn't expect it," Rigoberto Perez said in Spanish.
That's almost always the problem, Lestikow said.
"It's the adjustable rate loans," Lestikow said. "The buyers we are helping generally either didn't understand it, or just didn't know the terms of their loans."
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