Community Housing Resource Center

From the Executive Director

Hello,

Welcome to the first e-newsletter of the Community Housing Resource Center.  If you are receiving this, it is because you are an important partner in our work or you know someone who is, and they think that the aims of our organization - housing stability, financial security and homeownership - will find similar resonance with you.  When you are finished reading, please take a moment to forward this newsletter on to a friend who:

• is passionate about housing and income equality issues,
• might be thinking about buying a home,
• received a mortgage delinquency notice or fears the loss of their home,
• wants to know how to improve their credit or manage their debt, or
• is considering taking out a reverse mortgage.

In this issue, we introduce the newest member of our program staff, Carlos García.  Carlos provides budget, credit, debt management and foreclosure prevention counseling in both English and Spanish.  We are ecstatic to have him on board.

In another article, we ask our donors to stand and take a bow.  In particular, we are proud to shine a light on our largest financial supporter, The United Way of the Columbia-Willamette.

We couldn’t do our work without the dedication of our Board of Directors.  In this article we hear from our Board President, Marcel Goulet, about our current Board members and their leadership through the foreclosure crisis.

Elsewhere in the newsletter, we gather up some recent media coverage of our work that you may have missed.  In the News discusses two radio interviews given by our Program Manager, Kevin Gillette, about today’s housing market.

Finally, I want to thank the staff for doing work worth sharing with others. Karin Butler’s contributions at the Center are in mortgage default counseling and reverse mortgage counseling.  Sue Pupo, our Office Manager, and Daniel Couch, our Executive Assistant, join me as the administrative staff for the agency.  My thanks go out to all of them for their hard work just as my appreciation goes out to so many of you for supporting our efforts.

With much thanks,

Teri Duffy, Executive Director

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New Services in Spanish

Carlos comes to us from the Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation in Salem, Oregon.  He headed what started as a one-man satellite office and steadily grew it to a bustling and busy center.  One of the ways Carlos built up a strong clientele was by doing outreach in the Latino community. 

“In the Latino community it’s all about relationship building and getting people’s trust,” Carlos said.  “Word of mouth was my best tool.”   

Now Carlos heads outreach efforts in the Latino communities of Southwest Washington and the Portland metropolitan area.  It’s still early, but Carlos’ presence is already making a difference.  “One thing I’ve noticed between the first couple of weeks and recently is that I’ve gotten more calls from Spanish speakers coming to my voice mail.  The last default workshop had five Spanish speakers. I hadn’t seen any when I first started.”

In the coming weeks, we will begin to offer a mortgage default prevention workshop conducted entirely in Spanish. If Carlos’ history is any indicator, it shouldn’t take long before those classes are full.  With a smile, Carlos added, “I think the word is starting to get out there.” 

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A Thank You to Our Supporters

We are extremely pleased to announce that we were recently named a Community Investment grantee of The United Way of the Columbia-Willamette.  Over the next three years we will partner with the United Way to increase public awareness of wage and asset inequality and promote financial stability and independence for thousands of low-income residents in our community. 

In addition to the United Way of the Columbia-Willamette, we would like to recognize the organizations and individuals who provided financial support of our efforts through the first three quarters of the year.

Government Agencies, Corporations and Foundations

Accel Mortgage, Bank of America Home Loans, Building Industry Association of Clark County, The City of Vancouver, Clark County, Clark County Title Company, Columbia Credit Union, Community Foundation for SW Washington, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, First Independent, First Priority Financial, Golf Savings Bank, HomeStreet Bank, HUD's National Foreclosure Mitigation Program, OnPoint Community Credit Union, Reverse Mortgage Group, Security Signs, Stewart Title, US Bancorp Foundation, US Bank, Vancouver Housing Authority, The Wal-Mart Foundation, Washington Lodge #4 of Freemasons, Washington State Housing Finance Commission, Wells Fargo Bank

Individuals

Jennifer Barton, Tony Brouhard, David Camp, Chrissy Cole, Christine Dunn, Karen Evans, Laurie Hansen, Kathy Heinemann, Leah Higgins, Lena Houston, Brenda Jose, Kris Kirkevold, Mitch Lambley,  Dianne and Karl Millar, Teresa Munn, Jim and Bergan Peterson, Royce Pollard, Susan Rawson, Julie Robinson, Larry Smith, Nancy Steffen, Dr. Allan Weiland, Craig Williams, Lorrie Williams-Conway, Karen Wright

Thanks to each you.  We simply couldn’t do it without you. For a list of past donors, please visit our Partners page.

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Meet the Board of Directors

The CHRC Board of    Directors, from left:            Lisa Schmidt, Pam Baker,   Jim Temple, Lena Houston, Dave Dumas, Stephanie Smith, David Feeney, and   Marcel Goulet.

By now, it’s easy to let the persistent rise in foreclosure and unemployment figures wash over you. The problem is so large and so widespread that it’s difficult to know what to do about it.  Fortunately, the Community Housing Resource Center’s Board of Directors positioned the agency to respond to this crisis well before it was a lead news item.

It’s important to remember that when CHRC was formed nearly fifteen years ago, its primary mission was to advance homeownership.  We still provide homeownership counseling such as home buyer education classes and pre- and post-purchase counseling, but it’s only a part of what we do now.

The breadth of services that CHRC offers now reflects the way the Board has used its expertise, particularly in the housing industry, to anticipate community need and shape the agency’s programming.   “The organization has been flexible and versatile enough to meet its true mission which is to help meet the needs of the community and to strengthen the community,” noted Marcel Goulet, CHRC Board President.    

Last year we worked with more than 600 individuals and families who had fallen behind in their payments and were at risk of losing their home to foreclosure.  The demand has increased this year, and we have been able to respond in turn.  One part of this response is increasing the frequency of our mortgage default orientation session from weekly to twice-weekly.  Another important response is our hiring of Carlos García, a new counselor featured elsewhere in this newsletter. 

As the Board looks to the future, they must continue to adapt.  Goulet refuses to be complacent about the Board’s recent successes.  “As time goes on our ability to provide programs will change, the funding will change, the community needs themselves are going to go through some dramatic changes.” Yet with the guidance of the CHRC Board, it’s all but certain that the agency will be right there alongside the community every step of the way.

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In the News  

In September, Kevin was interviewed on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s regional discussion forum, Think Out Loud. At issue was the effectiveness of the $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers.  Kevin observed, “It’s really affected the entry level price range.  A year, year and a half ago, there wasn’t much that you could buy under $200,000 that was livable other than maybe a townhouse or a small condo.   Now an entire market has been created at that level, [and] it’s very hot, very active.”

Kevin added that the program’s impact has been limited.  The market is “still very depressed say above $300,000.  You don’t have the move-up buyer anymore.  They’ve lost equity, and in many cases around here they’re completely underwater on what they owe versus what the house is worth.” 

In fact, many of these types of homeowners in Multnomah and Clark County are more likely to move down than move up as mortgage default becomes more and more endemic to the region.  Mortgage defaults and foreclosures were the subject of a different interview Kevin gave in August, this time for the National Radio Project and an installment of the "How We Survive" series entitled Resisting Foreclosures.    

The federal government’s Making Home Affordable program is designed to encourage lenders to perform loan modifications for homeowners who are at risk of losing their home to foreclosure.  In contrast to the brisk first-time homebuyer market, loan modifications are taking months to process.  “Every lender is quite frankly swamped.  Every institution like ourselves is swamped.  There is no one staffed to handle the volume of business,” Kevin noted on the show.

In the meantime, banks continue to foreclose at historic levels and the mortgage default counseling classroom at Community Housing Resource Center is swollen beyond capacity.  This month we added additional mortgage default orientations to help us better meet the increased demand. 

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