Kevin Kelly/Key photo Michelle Briggs fills out paperwork before talking to loan counselors and negotiators at a mortgage assistance program, sponsored by Communities Creating Opportunity at St. Therese Little Flower Parish in Kansas City.

Instead, "It stinks," Kohlmeyer said, as she waited in the hallway of the rectory at St. Therese Little Flower Parish, waiting to speak with a "loan negotiator" who might make that letter they received just before Christmas go away.

On Dec. 20, Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest mortgage lending agency now affiliated with Bank of America, told the Kohlmeyers that since they were $5,000 behind on their payments, their home in northeast Kansas City would be foreclosed on Feb. 6.

"$5,000," she said. "Doesn't seem like a lot of money, does it? We've done everything we can think of to stay afloat. We can't."

But the Kohlmeyers' story is being repeated millions of times, all across the country.

Seven years ago, Leslie's job as a bookkeeper with a Kansas City restaurant company earned her nice pay and good benefits, including health insurance.

They felt secure enough to buy a modestly priced house in the historic Northeast Bottoms, and even to launch her husband into his own company - a homebuilding company.

"That tanked when the housing market tanked," Kohlmeyer said. "We got out before we owed too much."

That was two years ago. Her husband was out of work for six months before he found a job as a framer with a lumber company, assembling sections for pre-fabricated houses and storage sheds, for less than he had been making at the peak of owning his own company.

Then three months ago, the lumber company folded up its entire framing division. Her husband has been out of work since.

"Now we can't get caught up, and we are losing our house over $5,000," she said.

"You know what? I did the math," she said. "In seven years, we have paid back what we borrowed. But you know how mortgage loans are set up. You pay the interest up front," Kohlmeyer said.

Kohlmeyer said she did miss $5,000 worth of payments. But every month that she knew she couldn't pay, she called Countrywide - or tried to.

"You have to do all sorts of things to get to a person, and every time I finally got through to a person, it was never the same person twice," she said.

She was assured numerous times, she said, that since she had called to explain the predicament and was willing to work out the problem, her family was in no danger of losing its home. Then came the letter of Dec. 20.

Kohlmeyer was one of nearly 50 people about to lose their homes who came St. Therese Little Flower Parish on Jan. 13 for a loan modification program sponsored by Communities Creating Opportunity (CCO), a Kansas City affiliate of the national Pacific Institute for Community Organization.

In August, the Contra Costa, Calif., Interfaith Supporting Community Organization won a commitment from Bank of America/Countrywide to do a mass loan modification program for people about to lose their homes.

At that meeting were representatives from PICO affiliates in 25 cities, including Marian Youngblood of Kansas City's CCO.

When Bank of America officials promised to launch a loan modification program in Contra Costa County, Youngblood took the microphone.

"Will you commit to come to Kansas City?" she demanded. "They agreed on the spot."

Youngblood knew what she was talking about. She is a retired bank loan officer, and she knew how banks and mortgage lenders were targeting poor neighborhoods with offers of easy sub-prime loans and low initial payments that masked adjustable rate mortgages and interest-only payments that would balloon in a few years far beyond the borrower's ability to pay.

"They would qualify people for loans who were not qualified by falsifying credit scores and inflating appraisals," she said.

The California action occurred one month before the Wall Street collapse and the freezing of the credit market. Congress quickly passed in September a $700 billion bailout program that was supposed to secure bad investments, such as real estate loans.

"A lot of that money was supposed to be for foreclosures, but not a lot of it is being used for that," Youngblood said.

It makes good business sense, Youngblood said, to work with people to keep homes rather than to foreclose and attempt to sell the home in a bad market.

"They lose 87 cents on the dollar when a home has been foreclosed," Youngblood said.

Foreclosures not only devastate a family, they devastate entire neighborhoods, she said.

"It's more socially economical to stop a foreclosure than to let it proceed," Youngblood said.

But Father Ernie Davis, pastor of St. Therese Little Flower Parish, wondered how much good the loan modification event actually did.

Although about 35 people left with "a chance to save their homes," Father Davis said, none of them left with a plan to reduce their monthly payments, nor was there any reduction of amounts in arrears. That was merely folded into a new payment plan.

"I think we can be proud of ourselves that the event showed compassion and that so many volunteers were involved," Father Davis said in an e-mail to The Catholic Key.

"I am pleased that people had a chance to meet with a counselor and a loan modifier," he said. "But I don't think the lenders did us a favor."

Father Davis said the people who received help at St. Therese Little Flower Parish would find themselves still stuck with loans they can't repay, and owing more than their home is worth.

"Our event may have been very good public relations for the lender because they flew adjustors into Kansas City to meet with a few people in danger of foreclosure," he said.

"That's not what people need," he said. "People need a process so that anybody anywhere can get a chance to work out their mortgage problems with an agent who has the authority to act. This tells me that there are thousands of people trying to work through their problems, but they will end up losing their homes because mortgage companies do not have systems in place to make authoritative decisions."

Father Davis said it will take a "nationwide mandatory strategy" to head off the crisis he is already seeing within the boundaries of his parish, with block after block of vacant, foreclosed homes.

"None of the $700 billion bail-out money showed up here for the people who took part in our program," he said.

"They walked out of here with just as much debt as they came in with, and almost always, their new payments were just as high or even higher than before. They might have been able to get their foreclosure put on a temporary hold, but nobody got their real problem fixed," Father Davis said.

"While we are waiting for a nationwide mandatory program, thousands of families will be put out of their homes this week. And it will continue next week. And the week after that," Father Davis said.

Youngblood admitted that the problem is huge, and that the St. Therese Little Flower event did little, if anything, to solve it.

But for a few people it offered hope.

"That's the word: Hope," she said. "That's what we are all about as Christians. If we get just one person tonight with a modified loan, it will be worth it, and we'll be very, very happy."

CCO isn't about to quit, she said. The next stop: Kansas City City Council.

Youngblood said renters are in particular danger of becoming homeless without warning.

"We have renters who pay their rent every month. Their landlords don't pay the mortgage on the property, and they (renters) don't know anything about it," she said. "They'll go to work in the morning and when they come home that evening, they'll find all their stuff on the curb."

Youngblood said CCO will press the city council for an ordinance requiring landlords to notify city hall any time a rental property is subject to foreclosure, with the city hall notifying the renter.

Local action is needed, but the foreclosure crisis will also take federal action. Youngblood said she has been to Washington, D.C., to lobby for a national solution, and she will go again.

"There are communities where nobody is being helped," she said. "The word will get out. In this Christian, faith-based community, we are here to give them hope."

Two days after the St. Therese Little Flower event, Bank of America officials asked Congress for more money to bail it out of a sea of debt involving its purchase last year of the troubled Merrill Lynch investment firm.

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