Housing Help Pilot Program to Expand Statewide

State officials said Wednesday that a pilot program started in Lee County to provide foreclosure prevention assistance will be rolled out statewide in February 2011, provided it gets approval from the federal government.

Florida has been awarded $1 billion to provide assistance to unemployed or underemployed individuals and families under the Emergency Economic Stability Act of 2008. The funds are dispersed by the U.S. Treasury Department but the state program will be run by the Florida Housing Finance Corp. The program in Lee County began in October, and the statewide rollout will begin on Feb. 23.

Full story to follow.

Lee County was picked for the pilot program because it was one of the hardest-hit metro areas affected by the housing bubble and foreclosure crisis. The program has only been running six weeks, and so far just 14 homeowners are receiving assistance. More than 800 applied, but many were rejected for not meeting the requirements outlined by the program. To qualify, a homeowner must be using the home as a primary residence, not own another residence, have mortgage payments above 31 percent of monthly income and not have a mortgage worth more than $400,000 --among other qualifications.

As many as 70 other applications have been approved in the pilot program, and nearly 550 are under review, but FHFC officials said they need to get more mortgage servicers to sign up to the program and accept payments in order to help more people. There are only seven mortgage servicers signed up under the Lee County program, but FHFC director of homeownership programs David Westcott said his organization is in discussions with many others to join the program.