Our Foreclosure Intervention Program

At a Glance

In 2001, Home Repair Services started a small Financial Counseling service for low-income homeowners. Today, it has grown into Michigan’s largest non-profit program focused on helping families avoid foreclosure.

Here’s how the program works: We don’t hand out money to homeowners in crisis. Instead, we provide free evaluation and confidential counseling services to families at risk of foreclosure.

Our counselors specialize in getting in between the homeowner and the mortgage company. By that we mean we help mortgage companies understand homeowners and homeowners understand mortgage companies. We try very hard to help both parties find a new arrangement that will be a “win – win” for both. And we link homeowners with other organizations in Grand Rapids that can also assist. While we will not be able to help every homeowner keep their house, we will do our best in every case to help them avoid the foreclosure. Homeowners must be willing to work with us every step of the way.

It’s a perfect example of “helping people to help themselves.”

It’s a big job, getting bigger every year. In 2007 alone, we provided the following to low-income families in Kent County:

• Counseling sessions – 4,874
• “Money Matters” group classes – 46
• Mortgages pre-screened against predatory lending terms – 308
• Foreclosure cases opened – 837
• Foreclosures prevented – 290
• Percentage of families helped who were still current in mortgage payments after 1.9 years – 73.2%
• Average cost to prevent a foreclosure through our program – $629
• Average cost of a foreclosure to lenders – $50,000 to $60,000

Find out how you can help!