Grantee Profile: Homekeeping Mortgage Default Counseling, Inc.

Homekeeping Mortgage Default Counseling, Incorporated, is a HUD Approved Housing Counseling Agency that responds to the requirements of HUD.  They use statistics and data to measure the effectiveness of their work with housing consumers.  Even though the agency is certified in Comprehensive Housing Counseling, its focus is default and foreclosure prevention counseling.

Homekeeping is a non-profit, community-based organization, founded and incorporated in the State of North Carolina.  Its staff is committed to increasing home retention by preventing foreclosure, particularly for low-to-moderate income homeowners.  They provide education to homeowners and homebuyers, and teach homeowners to care for their homes to protect their investment.

When you visit Homekeeping Default Mortgage Counseling, Ms. Mary Tay, Executive Director and Founder, will invite you into her cozy office, offer you something to eat, and tell you story after story of people she meets who have fallen on hard times and can’t pay their mortgages.  Without mentioning any names, Ms. Tay will describe people who have been laid off from jobs they have worked for decades.  She will tell you about folks without health insurance who have had accidents and run up huge hospital bills.  She works with homeowners whose hours at their factory jobs have been cut back just as their adjustable-rate mortgage increased by hundreds of dollars a month.  Her cases have included elderly couples living on Social Security with the rising cost of multiple prescriptions eating into their mortgage money.  This agency has even helped a 78-year-old widow whose daughter in New Jersey suddenly stopped paying her mortgage and could not be reached by phone.  A neighbor referred her to Homekeeping.

By the time clients come to see Ms. Tay, many of her clients are already in foreclosure, and a few have come in to talk with her only days from having their homes sold at auction.  One lady’s home had been sold the day before.  But if they are willing to struggle to keep their homes, they have come to the right place.  Homekeeping has a phenomenal success rate of over 90% in keeping homeowners in their homes!

Ms. Tay is committed, caring, and dedicated to helping people keep their homes.  She accomplishes this by working countless hours on behalf of each and every client.  She is able to do this because of her own experience of moving out of public housing and becoming a first-time homebuyer.  She has also developed extensive contacts and trusting relationships with the staffs at the Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), mortgage insurers, local non-profit agencies, and banks all over the country.  (Mortgages are bundled and sold, not necessarily locally.)

Long before the current mortgage crisis, Homekeeping specialized in working with low-to-moderate income homeowners.  Ms. Tay recruited and trained her Latina neighbor to assist her with Spanish-speaking clients.  Among Ms. Tay’s many skills are teaching budgeting and financial literacy with down-to-earth practical examples, so first-time homeowners do not get into trouble in the first place.  Those whose houses are saved from foreclosure do not fall behind as easily again.

Ms. Tay is also known for negotiation of creative win-win solutions that help both her clients and the mortgage holders.  For example, when the elderly widow mentioned above contacted Ms. Tay, sadly the home had already been foreclosed.  The frail little lady had not a clue about how to handle the mysterious mail coming to her address describing delinquency and foreclosure.  She had never dealt with such issues as her daughter, many states away, had always paid the mortgage note and taken care of such matters after the death of her father.  When this devastated senior became a client of Homekeeping, a search for the daughter revealed that her daughter in New Jersey had suffered a nervous breakdown and had been hospitalized long-term.  Since the sale had already occurred, Ms. Tay convinced and solicited the help of HUD to sell the home to a local housing non-profit agency.  The elderly widow, mother and former owner of this home is now guaranteed to be able to stay in her home as long as she can live independently.  She pays a low fixed monthly percentage of her Social Security income as a renter.

Ms. Tay is well known in the Greensboro community, having lived here for more than thirty years.  Her clients trust her expertise and appreciate her sensitivity to their needs in this turbulent economy.  Ms. Tay’s extraordinary work is not self-supporting, however. By the time foreclosure has begun, her clients have often fallen several months behind in their mortgage payments and many cannot afford even the nominal $25 fee Homekeeping charges for mortgage counseling.  (That does not stop them from thanking her by bringing her a pie, or a homemade cake, a beautiful area rug and once in a while a $5 dollar bill in a card.)  Many former clients volunteer to help Homekeeping help others.

F4DC is honored to support Ms. Tay’s work with two grants to help provide computer support, fund the training of two long-time volunteers as HUD-certified housing counselors, expand Homekeeping’s Board, and leverage other fundraising.  If you are interested in helping to support Homekeeping, contact Ms. Tay at (336) 510-9619 or email her at mbynum1@triad.rr.com.