Nonprofits bear brunt of foreclosure fight

By Kristina Cooke

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mohammed Ibrahim is overwhelmed by people asking for help.

"It's not only the sheer volume of people needing help but the emotion," said Ibrahim, a counselor at the Neighborhood Housing Services of Staten Island in New York. "Each person comes with a different story. Often they break down and cry."

The group that Ibrahim works for helps financially troubled families in Staten Island, a middle-income borough of New York City, try to avoid foreclosure on their homes.

The number of calls to his office jumped last summer as the mortgage crisis gripping the United States escalated. It rose even more in October, when a national hotline that refers cases to local groups like Ibrahim's became a central part of a government plan to prevent foreclosures.

Between October and December of 2007, Ibrahim took on 63 cases, compared with 77 cases for the previous nine months and just a handful in 2006. After some holiday respite, January is already shaping up to be even busier, he said.

Around the New York region and in other parts of the country, mortgage counselors report a similar onslaught of cases, especially since Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the HOPE NOW alliance of lenders, investors and counselors in October.

"We're getting so many calls about the government plan, but no real answers on how we are supposed to help them," said Eileen Anderson, who runs two NeighborWorks counseling centers on suburban Long Island, outside New York City.

The number of calls to Anderson's offices rose more than tenfold in 2007 from the year before, and since October more than half of those calls have been referrals from HOPE NOW, she said.