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Foreclosures rise in boro

By juan soto

It was just last year that Abdul was about to lose his one-family Ozone Park property to the bank.

A 60-year-old bus driver, Abdul bought the house back in 1998 and had been paying his monthly mortgage regularly until 2010. That year, his wife had a terrible traffic accident and the family fell behind on the bank payments.

Two incomes became one, and the family had trouble paying its bills.

Fortunately, Abdul, with the help of Queens Legal Services, was able to save his house under a 2009 law that requires banks to have mandatory conferences with homeowners to work out settlements in a courtroom.

“The bank gave me a really hard time,” said the homeowner, who asked that his last name not be published. “I though I was going to lose my house.”

According to the New York Unified Court System, 91,522 of these settlement conferences took place in New York City between October 2012 and October 2013.

Of those, just 10,346 ended in foreclosure.

On June 11, the state Assembly voted 56-1 to renew the law, which has saved the homes of thousands of New Yorkers. The current version of the law is set to expire in 2015.

The bill to expand these groundbreaking protections for another five-year period was introduced by state Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx) and state AssemblywomanHelene Weinstein (D-Brooklyn).

“Foreclosures take a toll on entire neighborhoods and can destroy otherwise safe, beautiful areas,” said Klein.

According to a report released by the Assembly, a total of 10,060 Queens homeowners are falling behind on their mortgage payments and are in danger of foreclosure. Of that number, the report pointed out, 9,360 are in minority neighborhoods.

“The crisis is not over,” Franklin Romeo, director of the Homeowner and Consumer Rights Project of Queens Legal Services, told TimesLedger Newspapers. Romeo said southeast Queens, particularly Jamaica, South Jamaica and St. Albans, were vulnerable along with similar pockets in Flushing, East Elmhurst and Corona.

Southeast Queens was the epicenter of the foreclosure earthquake in the city following the market collapse in 2008 and one of the biggest areas affected by the housing crisis in the whole country.

“This year we are experiencing a slight increase of foreclosures compared to last year,” Romeo said.

His organization provides free legal services to individuals facing pre-closure proceedings.

The passage of the bill extending the court mandatory settlement conferences was also applauded by the state coalition New Yorkers for Responsible Lending. The group, like the Assembly, urged Gov. Andrew Cuomo to sign the bill.

“The mandatory settlement process has been a model nationally,” the coalition said in a statement, pointing out that before the 2009 law, more than 90 percent of foreclosure cases ended in judgments against the homeowners.

Abdul hopes the same protections that saved him from losing his home will continue to support Queens neighborhoods.

“I was able to negotiate a loan modification in these settlement conferences,” he said. “Without the help of Queens Legal Services and the settlement conferences, I wouldn’t have my home today.”

Reach reporter Juan Soto by e-mail at jsoto@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.