Lawmaker wants to beef up state help in forclosure cases
A state law passed last year to help reduce mortgage foreclosures has been mostly a failure, with only six settlements in Westchester, a state senator said today.
“Current anti-foreclosure efforts have not been very effective,’’ said Sen. jeff Klein, D-Bronx, who also represents Pelham and Eastchester as well as parts of Yonkers, New Rochelle and Mount Vernon. “We need to do more…:”
Figures gathered by Klein show that a law signed last August that requires settlement conferences between banks and borrowers mostly hasn’t worked. Of the 94 conferences in Westchester in March and April,produced only six settlements. Figures for New York City and Long Island showed equally dismal results.
Klein announced today he’s sponsoring a bill with Assemblyman hakeem Jeffries, D-Brooklyn, that would require homeowners facing foreclosure who want to avoid losing their homes to work with a counselor from the state Banking Department and work out a plan to present to bankers at a conference. Banks would also be given more incentives to reach settlements.
The program would cost $7-$8 million, but Klein said money has already been allocated for counseling programs.
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All of these houses approaching foreclosure are also not paying property or school taxes (they being included with unpaid escrow). This, of course, drives up the tax payments of the rest of us who do pay their mortgages. One definitive way to alleviate this dilemma for everyone is to re-organize this State and local school system cabal, stop with the ridiculous salary and benefits explosion, and force them, as well as county and local government, to be fiscally responsive to the realities of the age. Instead, all these legislative intellectual giants look for ways to maintain and unworkable status quo while, in effect, further draining our dwindling inability to pay for it all. The family of government keeps ordering new BMWs when it is obviously time to replace the old, broken-down Mercedes of the disappeared good times with a four-cylinder Ford until the family’s fiscal plight improves. Better yet, take the bus or walk until your prospects improve, as did our ancestors before the arrival of the ubiquitous, ultimately self-defeating credit card.