We wanted to provide updates on a few important program milestones. There is still a lot of work to be done, however, the figures below show how some of the recent progress with Keep Your Home California has impacted the cumulative results.
Over $1.5 billion in program funding has either been provided to homeowners already or is scheduled for disbursement, putting Keep Your Home California on track to utilize all program funds ahead of the program's expiration date of December 31, 2020.
More than 65,000 households will have received Keep Your Home California assistance by the end of July 2016.
Thirteen (13) counties have received over $30 million in assistance since the program began. Six (6) of those counties have received over $80 million in assistance and four of the six - Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego - have eclipsed $100 million in assistance.
Through our valuable partnership with the California Employment Development Department (EDD), more than 3 million Keep Your Home California flyers have been mailed to people collecting EDD unemployment benefits since the beginning of 2014. These flyers are going to the exact audience for which the Unemployment Mortgage Assistance Program was designed.
Keep Your Home California has had a presence at over 1,000 community outreach events since the program was fully implemented in 2011. The events have provided vital opportunities to connect with potential candidates in-person to raise awareness about the program.
While we are proud of the what has been accomplished thus far, there are still many more California homeowners who are struggling with their mortgage payments due to financial hardships. We will continue working until we reach the ultimate milestone: all available funding provided to homeowners.
The Making Home Affordable Programs (MHA) will close at the end of 2016, so the white paper was published to share the experience of the government agencies in implementing crisis era programs in an effort to assist the mortgage servicing industry. From the press release:
In particular, the white paper outlines five principles that the agencies believe were essential to the success of the government's programs and should provide a foundation for any future loss mitigation programs. The principles are:
Accessibility: Ensuring that there is a simple process in place for homeowners to seek mortgage assistance and that as many homeowners as possible are able to easily obtain the needed and appropriate level of assistance.
Affordability: Providing homeowners with meaningful payment relief that addresses the needs of the homeowner, the servicer and the investor to support long-term performance.
Sustainability: Offering solutions designed to resolve the delinquency and be effective long-term for the homeowner, the servicer and the investor.
Transparency: Ensuring that the process to obtain assistance, and the terms of that assistance, are as clear and understandable as possible to homeowners, and that information about options and their utilization is available to the appropriate parties.
Accountability: Ensuring that there is an appropriate level of oversight of the process to obtain mortgage assistance.
Funding
(as of July 28, 2016)
Programs
Homeowners Assisted
Total Amount Distributed
Unemployment Mortgage Assistance
42,955
$692,745,568.82
Principal Reduction Program
9,203
$560,233,842.28
Mortgage Reinstatement Assistance Program
11,379
$168,642,712.28
Reverse Mortgage Assistance Pilot Program
420
$5,036,794.40
Transition Assistance Program
993
$3,528,994.94
Total Program
Funds Allocated
64,950
$1,430,187,912.72
Recent Blog Post:
Higher Income Limits in 26 Counties Will Help More Homeowners
The higher income limits - a boost of several hundred to a couple thousand dollars - will allow more homeowners to be eligible for Keep Your Home California.
Keep Your Home California has already helped more than 65,000 homeowners, and thousands more could benefit from the free mortgage-assistance program, especially with the increased income limits.
When graphic artist and songwriter Christopher A. was laid off in June 2015, he was singing the blues.
But after a conversation with his mortgage servicer, Guild Mortgage Company, he learned that Keep Your Home California could help him stay in tune with his finances - and his monthly mortgage payment.
"I didn't even know there was a program in place" to help homeowners with their mortgage, says Christopher, who owns a condo in Southern California.
Christopher applied for the free mortgage-assistance program a few weeks after he was laid off, and was approved several weeks later for the Unemployment Mortgage Assistance Program.
A: Homeowners may be eligible to receive Unemployment Mortgage Assistance even if their loan is in foreclosure. Please call Keep Your Home California at 888-954-KEEP (5337) to see if we can help. Keep Your Home California will not accept an application for any program if the foreclosure Notice of Sale date is less than 21 days from the date the homeowner applies for assistance.
