Thousands at Cow Palace Seeking Mortgage Help
October 17th, 2009Via: San Francisco Chronicle:
The Cow Palace, site of rodeos and rock concerts, was transformed into a foreclosure-prevention fair on Friday that drew thousands of struggling borrowers hoping for help to make their mortgages more affordable.
Armed with sleeping bags or folding chairs, many spent a chilly night on the pavement outside the Daly City event center.
“I’m just trying to keep my house,” said Gerasim Karapetian of Yorba Linda (Orange County), as he waited in the bleachers to meet with a loan counselor. “I drove eight hours, got here at 2 a.m., and waited outside all night. The line wrapped around the whole parking lot.”
He was among more than 4,000 people from around California and neighboring states who converged on the Save the Dream tour organized by NACA, the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, a Massachusetts nonprofit ( www.naca.com).
The five-day event continues through Tuesday. Similar NACA tours in Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Las Vegas drew huge crowds, reflecting the nationwide spread of the foreclosure crisis.
The Cow Palace arena’s concrete floor was a beehive of purposeful activity, set up with 300 tables where NACA counselors wearing bright red or yellow T-shirts met one-on-one with homeowners to enter their financial information into software for transmission to their lenders – who were across the hall. Banks sent dozens of representatives to review homeowners’ cases and in some cases modify their loans on the spot to make them more affordable.
Research Credit: ottilie
