12/15/2010 11:34 AM (PST)

Last spring 5 of the "Hardest Hit" mortgage meltdown states were awarded large amounts of money for loan mod, unemployment and other housing assistance programs. None of these have launched yet, but they will soon. The Better Business Bureau of the Southland will provide updates on these state programs as these become available.

California
In 2010 California received $2 billion from the Treasury Department to help California families who are struggling to pay their mortgages. The funds are being administered by the California Housing Finance Agency under an umbrella initiative called “Keep Your Home” (see http://keepyourhome.calhfa.ca.gov)

The four Keep Your Home Programs are:
? Unemployment Mortgage Assistance
? Mortgage Reinstatement Assistance Program
? Principal Reduction Program
? Transition Assistance Program

Getting these programs up and running is a huge undertaking and the original launch date of November 1st for the Keep Your Home programs has been pushed back until January 2011. CalHFA has designated a California-based nonprofit housing counseling agency to be the processing center for the California programs. Counselors in the center will answer inbound calls from homeowners, collect application data, verify eligibility, provide recommendations to homeowners about their options, and execute the enrollment of homeowners into the appropriate CalHFA programs.

Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan
Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan also received “Hardest Hit” funds and are developing similar programs to the ones listed above. If you are a resident of one of those states you should check with your state’s housing department to see about availability of mortgage or unemployment assistance (to our knowledge none of them has launched yet).

Florida - www.floridahousing.org/HousingResources/ForeclosurePreventionLinksAndResources/FloridaHardest-HitHelpProgram/

Michigan - www.michigan.gov/mshda/0,1607,7-141--235359--,00.html

Arizona - www.housingaz.com

Nevada - www.nvhousing.state.nv.us

12/15/2010 1:46 PM (PST)

fyi on the msg posted above: when I pasted the document from Word the bullets came out as question marks!