Financial regulation bill provides money to help unemployed Brockton homeowners

BROCKTON - Nylton Andrade hopes that a federal bill President Obama was expected to sign today will help him and his wife keep their home.

Andrade lives on the city's West Side in a white, two-story home with red trim. He's lived there for three years with his wife and wants to stay.

But he lost his job teaching graphic design in the Boston public schools last year, and his wife later lost her job at Main Street Bank.

Now, as they look for employment, the federal bill could help them keep their home.

The financial regulation bill that Obama was to sign today contains a $1 billion program - which will be in place by Oct. 1 - that provides fixed-interest rate loans to unemployed homeowners with reasonable prospects for reemployment to help them avoid foreclosure.

Andrade said there aren't many graphic-design teaching jobs in high schools, so he'd like to get certified to teach a related subject, like computer science. But even with the modified mortgage payments he's making now, going back to school for another certification is out of the question.

Experts say Andrade's situation is increasingly typical of homeowners who are going through foreclosure now.

"Since we started tracking it when the trouble really started three years ago, we went from sub-prime loans to people who might have over-borrowed, to the unemployment factor (having) an impact on people going into foreclosure," said Plymouth County Registrar of Deeds John Buckley.

That was a point that Andrade and 500 other Brockton residents made to U.S. Reps. Barney Frank and Stephen Lynch and Federal Reserve officials when they toured Brockton in November. It was one of nine community meetings the Federal Reserve held across the country last year amid the housing crisis.

The Brockton Interfaith Community, which Andrade volunteers for, was one of the organizers of the meeting. The group emphasized the link between unemployment and foreclosure to the officials.

"That effort helped build a coalition across the country," Rep. Frank said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

Frank, worried that $1 billion won't be enough to satisfy the demand for the program, said the Obama administration will be able to add an additional $2 billion to the program in the future.

"At $1 billion, it means ‘X' number of people are not going to be (foreclosed). If you get to $3 billion, it's going to have an impact," he said.

Mayor Linda Balzotti was pleased the program is becoming law.

"Clearly that is going to be benefit to Brockton, being a community that has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the state and having a higher unemployment rate. I'm sure we have a lot of people who are on the verge of being foreclosed," she said .

In June, 49 foreclosures were finalized in Brockton and another 39 were begun, the highest in Plymouth County.

Erik Potter may be reached at epotter@enterprisenews.com.