Finding trust in a time of trouble

At a time when their economic world is crashing around them, it may be that the most pressing need for a family facing foreclosure is trust.

Yes, these families need information, but they need it from experts who can assess the full depths of their personal situation and help them navigate often turgid and shark-infested waters that actually can leave them worse off than they already are.

That's one reason why programs like a pilot being tested in DuPage County and an effort announced Monday by the Illinois Supreme Court hold such promise.

Everyone knows about the explosions in home foreclosures over the past four years, and even as encouraging economic indicators suggest that housing markets and prices are stabilizing, foreclosures continue to climb. Too often, attorneys, judges and banks agree, families in trouble simply freeze up. Faced with impending disaster and a host of confusing, complicated options, they choose either to do nothing or to throw in with sweet-talking private companies whose only real mission is to acquire what few resources the troubled homeowners have left.

The DuPage County courts saw this happening and began working with the county board, attorneys and legal services agencies to provide counselors and advocates to help homeowners understand all their options.

“I welcome it,” attorney R. Elliot Halsey told Daily Herald reporter Josh Stockinger for a story published on Monday, “because it provides the resources the defendants need right there in court and steers them to HUD-approved counselors as opposed to the questionable services out there, as opposed to fumbling through it on their own.”

The Supreme Court's initiative establishes a 14-member committee made up of judges, bankers and lawyers to address systemic problems in the courts that contribute to the foreclosure crisis. Combined with localized efforts like that in DuPage, this group also hopefully will develop protections and processes helping find potential solutions other than foreclosure for troubled homeowners.

All parties, of course, have a stake in stemming the foreclosure surge. The courts are clogged with too many cases. Banks and mortgage companies have too many properties on their hands. Worst of all, too many people who had invested in the American dream find themselves and their families without the home that had meant so much for their stability and security.

The challenge is finding ways to help that don't also sap governments of limited resources. That's no small hurdle in the current economic climate, but as these cooperative efforts show, it's not an insurmountable one. It's merely a matter of leading people who are in trouble to pertinent information they can trust.