Residents hear strategies to stave off foreclosure

Nadine Hill and her children in the living room of the Woodrow Avenue home (right) that she fears could soon be in foreclosure. (Photos by Justine Hunt/Globe Staff)

Nadine Hill brought her 4-year-old son, Mark, to the grocery store recently. While she shopped, he trailed behind her talking into a toy cellphone. At one point, from over her shoulder, Hill heard him fretting aloud to his imaginary listener about becoming homeless.

Hill speaks carefully and deliberately. She's stoic until she mentions her son's anxiety, and then her hands tremble and her eyes water and redden. Like hundreds of others in Boston, Hill is facing the possibility of foreclosure. She thought she had concealed the fact from her four children, until she heard her son on his phone.

"How am I going to tell them we might be going into a shelter?" she asks.

Fears like these drew Hill and about 80 other Bostonians to Dorchester's Great Hall on a recent, frigid Wednesday evening for a foreclosure prevention meeting, coordinated and run by a constellation of nonprofit groups offering assistance to people affected by the housing crisis.

The gathering was "born out of necessity," said City Councilor Charles Yancey, a cosponsor of the meeting, who said his office had been deluged by calls from constituents facing losing their homes.

It was the second such meeting that Yancey, cosponsor City Councilor Chuck Turner, who has since been charged with accepting a bribe, and nonprofits, including Greater Boston Legal Services, City Life/Vida Urbana, the Boston Tenants Coalition, and the 4 Corners Action Coalition, had held this fall. A third meeting is planned for Jan. 29 in Mattapan.

On the night Hill attended, the audience learned about loan renegotiation, legislative attempts to mitigate the foreclosure crisis, and the legal process of eviction.

The collected organizations had subdued reassurance for the audience.

"There is hope - we can't promise you that we can help - but there is hope," said Nadine Cohen, an attorney with Greater Boston Legal Services.

After both meetings, Cohen's group offered free legal representation to low-income people facing eviction, though she said they have nowhere near the capacity to offer help to everyone that needs it.

Steven Meacham of City Life/ Vida Urbana said his group has been blanketing the city for weeks, visiting people whose homes or landlords face foreclosure, offering to publicize their cases.

City Life pressures banks with protests, and when publicity tactics fail, they physically disrupt the eviction process. So far, members of City Life have chained themselves to the front of 13 foreclosed homes to try to prevent the sheriff's department from evicting residents.

Summarizing City Life's strategy, Meacham said, "If banks don't want bad publicity, that's for sure what we're going to give them."

When Meacham finished, there was time for response from the audience, and Hill and others rose and told their stories. Then the crowd dispersed to the tables ringing the room, staffed by volunteers who assessed their cases and directed them to the agency with the best chance of helping them.

Hill said that four years ago she started looking for a house. She settled on a two-family home in Dorchester that was being sold by a man she met through her work as a pharmacy technician. Together, they contacted a bank and for six months they talked with a loan agent about the sale. Hill said she began to think of the agent as a friend. When he told her she was getting the best possible deal, she signed the loan agreement.

She didn't have an attorney, and she said she wasn't encouraged to get one.

Hill's loan payment was just barely affordable, but she had a steady job, and, she thought, a fixed-rate loan. She figured she could scrape by.

She said she paid her loan faithfully for more than three years. Then in August she received a letter from her bank saying the interest rate would increase from 4 to 5 percent in October, and her monthly payment would increase by about $300.

At that point, Hill said she read her loan documents for the first time and learned the interest rate was only fixed for three years. It will increase again in October 2009 if she still has her home. The monthly payment Hill could once barely afford is now beyond her means.

Hill said she has been trying to negotiate with her bank, to no avail. She requested a loan modification in September.

She said they responded with a denial letter that included the suggestion that she consider selling her home.

Last month she sent in her old payment amount and her check was returned.

Scared and feeling like she had no options, Hill contacted Yancey's office and learned about the foreclosure prevention meeting. Attending the meeting meant coming to the Great Hall after an 11-hour shift and spending money on fast food for her children because she had no time to cook. It was an extra expense she could barely afford, she said.

While there, Hill met with Veronica Truell, a foreclosure intervention specialist with the Codman Square Community Development Corporation, who promised to help her.

Hill left more hopeful than when she arrived, but still troubled.

"This is the worst thing I've ever dealt with," she said. "Anything else I could stand on my feet and fight."

Colin Asher can be reached at Colin.Asher@gmail.com.