Congressional Record — Senate S 11584

Philadelphia’s Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Pilot Program began with a resolution passed by the City Council in March 2008, calling on Sheriff John D. Green to scrap the sheriff’s sale scheduled for April. Low-income neighborhoods were already experiencing a surge of foreclosures involving subprime loans given to people with tainted credit. With unemployment growing, lost paychecks were now pushing people into delinquency, reaching into middle-class and even wealthy neighborhoods. In early 2008, nearly 200 homes a month were being auctioned by the sheriff’s office, about one-third more than in 2006. In West Philadelphia, Councilman Curtis Jones Jr., one of the sponsors of the resolution, watched his childhood neighborhood consumed by foreclosure, as the homes of working families—their porches once lined with flower pots—were boarded up with plywood. ‘‘It becomes a blight on your entire community,’’ Mr. Jones said. ‘‘It creates an environment that fosters everything bad, from prostitution to drug dealing to wildlife, like raccoons taking over whole houses. One house becomes 10, and 10 becomes the whole block.’’ In response to the resolution, Sheriff Green canceled the April sale. Meanwhile, Judge Annette M. Rizzo, who oversaw a local task force on stemming foreclosures, joined with the president judge of Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas to develop the program. For Judge Rizzo, a high-energy woman who has long taken an interest in housing policy, the moratorium presented both a crisis and an opportunity. The sheriff was effectively refusing to fulfill his mandated responsibilities, leaving his office vulnerable to legal challenge. But if the mortgage companies could be persuaded to participate in an alternative way of addressing foreclosures, more people could stay in their homes. ‘‘I realized we’re either going to go down in flames or we’re going to be a national model,’’ Judge Rizzo said. ‘‘We’re going to look at these cases and see what we can work out.’’ Mr. Hall knew none of this. What he knew was that his life seemed to be unraveling.