Gladys MacIntosh from Amherst makes her way across the floor of Cleveland State University's convocation center. In the seats above her there are a couple thousand others waiting for their turn to see a NACA counselor.
CHASITY JOHNSON: What's your name? Nice to meet you, Gladys .
Chastity Johnson is one of about 250 mortgage specialists bussed in to the CSU arena for the four-day Cleveland stand. MacIntosh brought along a collection of documents that detail her perilous financial status. Ironically, the divorced mother of two was once a home loan counselor herself, but now she's jobless, living off of retirement savings, and trying to complete a college degree to increase her odds of employment. She's got a $700 monthly house payment that she can't afford.
CHASTITY JOHNSON: So, you don't eat out… limit usage of fuel. Have you cut utilities and all that?
GLADYS: Oh yeah. The only reason I've still got the internet is because of my class.
DCB: The counselor suggests trying for a six-month forbearance --- or suspension --- of mortgage payments. Gladys MacIntosh then heads into a back room where representatives from many of the nation's major loan servicers have come to negotiate new deals with homeowners.
SOUND: Change of ambience from the buzz of counselors talking on the open convocation floor to the din of the negotiating room.
A servicer from Wells Fargo offers Macintosh a three month moratorium on her house payment.
MANESHA: The moratorium will actually suspend the payment for 90 days. However, at the end of the 90 days, the payment would be due at that time.
GLADYS MACINTOSH: At the end of that 90 days, then, I would owe 2100 dollars? So, what are you really doing for me? That's not taking the pressure off me. Do you understand what I'm saying? Because, I'm out there actively looking for a job. I am trying to go to school and get a degree. I'm trying to do it all.
MacIntosh smiles politely and leaves the table. Then, she turns to me and says
GLADYS MACINTOSH: If I was in foreclosure, I'd have all the help that there was out there, but because I'm not, then, nobody can help me. I just end up losing…I will be a statistic... just not right now.
SOUND: ambience changes to a different part of the negotiating room.
Sitting at a different table, Dale and Marcia Wolf have made an hour commute from their home in Mansfield to try their luck with the NACA loan modification group.
DALE WOLF: We've been in the house about 35 years.
The rasp in Dale Wolf's voice is the remnant of a bout with throat cancer. Marcia says that's one of the reasons they took out a second mortgage on the house --- to help pay all of those medical bills.
MARCIA WOLF: The health insurance alone is about as high as the house payments.
They are paying six percent interest on their home loan, but hope today they can get it cut in half. Greg, from American Home Mortgage nods sympathetically as he clicks his way through their case on his laptop. After five minutes of doing the numbers, he offers to cut their interest rate even more -- down to two percent.
GREG: If you're just worried about savings every month, it's the best thing. I mean, two percent --- it's fantastic.
Dale Wolf and his wife will be paying about 240 bucks a month instead of $600. The catch is...at this pace...the new mortgage extends their payments till the year 2033, at which time they'll still owe about $30,000. Still, Wolf is elated
DALE WOLF: This is a win-win for both of us. It's a win for us because it helps us in our financial budget, and it's a win for them, because they don't have a home that they can't sell to get even a little bit of their money back. I'm just really tickled to death on what's happened here.
DCB: We don't know how many of the reported 35,000 people who came to the four-day mortgage modification event in Cleveland actually got the help they were looking for. We do know that the number looking for help, still continues to rise.
