More NE Ohio Callers Looking for Mortgage Help to Hotline Have Lost Jobs

Monday, May 18, 2009
Topics: Economy
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The number of callers to the United Way's 211 hotline looking for help with their mortgage is down slightly from last year. But workers there worry because a growing number of callers are looking for mortgage help for a new reason. As part of our ongoing series, Facing the Mortgage Crisis, ideastream®'s Mhari Saito reports.

Since 2006, United Way’s First Call for Help 211 hotline has been getting calls from borrowers looking for help with their bad subprime mortgages. Hotline director Steve Wertheim says that’s still happening, but now phone workers are getting more calls from homeowners underwater because someone in the house has lost a job.

Steve Wertheim:We’re getting folks where if one person loses their job, they can no longer afford to live in a Solon or a Westlake. So they’re behind on their mortgage for economic reasons.

Wertheim says the number of borrowers looking for mortgage help from the outer ring suburbs is up nearly 50 percent from last year.  But callers from places like Strongsville and North Olmsted only make up about 12 percent of the more than 1600 calls for mortgage help the hotline got in the first three months of this year. The largest number of callers is still from the city of Cleveland, though that number is down from last year. Wertheim says he thinks that’s because the city was hit by the foreclosure crisis earlier. 

Additional Information

United Way's First Call for Help 211 Hotline.

More In This Series...

This feature is part of the series The Foreclosure Crisis.