Margert in the News

The Case for Housing Counseling
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The New York Times

By Nicole Bengiveno - Published: March 5, 2010

TO walk the streets of Brownsville and East New York, Brooklyn, is to see neighborhoods ravaged by foreclosure, homes boarded up and marshals’ notices taped to doors. Yet in the midst of this pain sit several swaths of well-tended homes, about 3,000 in all, each with a driveway and statuary and garden. Not one of their owners has lost a home.

Five miles away in Jamaica, Queens, another neighborhood hammered by foreclosures, there remain blocks where not one house has been put up for auction in the current crisis.

Stroll around Soundview in the Bronx, or Windsor Terrace and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, and the pattern becomes clear. Of more than 60,000 New York homes built or rehabilitated by the city in partnership with nonprofit groups like Nehemiah and Neighborhood Housing Services over three decades, fewer than 1 percent have fallen into foreclosure.

It is a hidden-in-plain-sight success story: these alliances have sidestepped the plague of foreclosure by delivering homes to working-class families in a distinctly traditional manner. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development and nonprofit groups created sturdy, affordable homes. Counselors screened credit histories and required that applicants attend ownership classes, put cash down and obtain prime-loan mortgages.

“If you didn’t have good credit, you were out — it was old-fashioned,” recalled Zandra Brockman, 52, who bought one of the Nehemiah homes in East New York for $68,500 in 1999. “They didn’t want to sell you a home and have you lose everything.”

 As Congress debates the causes of the nation’s housing calamity, many Republicans have accused Democrats of promoting homeownership at any cost, pressuring banks and federal agencies to issue mortgages, no matter how exotic the lending terms or how shaky the applicants’ finances. Even some advocates for moderate-income subsidized housing have acknowledged that ownership mania swept the country in the last 15 years.

In these New York neighborhoods, both liberal and some conservative analysts see a model for bringing low- and middle-income workers, many of them black and Latino, back into the housing market.

Margert Community Corporation is a New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) Neighborhood Preservation Company, a HUD and HPD approved housing counseling agency and a partner with NEDAP and the Center for NYC Neighborhoods in protecting homeowners from foreclosure and predatory lending.

Margert Teams with NeighborWorks® America on Foreclosure Prevention Workshops
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NeighborWorks® America, the HOPE NOW Alliance and the Making Home Affordable program are conducting a series of Foreclosure Prevention Workshops across the country. The borrower outreach events are designed to help bring together homeowners in financial distress for a face-to-face meeting with a representative from their mortgage lender and/or local housing counselor.

Margert Community Corporation will be participating at the following times and place:

April 29, Thursday, 1:00 – 7:30 pm
April 30, Friday, 1:00 – 7:30 pm

Nassau Coliseum
1255 Hempstead Turnpike
Long Island, NY 11553

The housing counseling that happens at these events is powerful and very important. This initial contact with you, for many borrowers, is often the start of a professional relationship that provides a realistic understanding of their options and the ability to make sound financial decisions.

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Crackdown Sought on Debt Scams and Foreclosure Abuse
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by Emily Claire Atkin

April 26, 2010

New Yorkers are needlessly losing money and families are being devastated, according to New Yorkers for Responsible Lending, a coalition of representatives from more than 150 groups fighting what they consider abusive debt collection and unfair home foreclosure practices.

The coalition, which includes the AARP, New York Public Interest Research Group and the Empire Justice Center, is a project of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, a resource and advocacy center for community groups in New York City.

Group representatives conducted a rally in Albany April 15 to tout their 2010 policy platform and urge legislators to support the Consumer Credit Fairness Act. The coalition states that bill S.4398-a/A.7558-a, sponsored by Senate Codes Committee Chairman Eric Schneiderman, D-Manhattan, and Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Helene Weinstein, D-Brooklyn, would "stem the tide of abusive debt collection cases currently flooding the courts."

The issue of illegal home foreclosure practices did not have an accompanying bill, but Sarah Ludwig, executive director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, said the groups were starting conversations with legislators.

"Abusive financial practices were a major ca use of our economic crisis and the financial meltdown," said Ludwig. "In fact, we have a lot of financial institutions and debt collection and other entities that are taking advantage of the recession, taking advantage of economic hardship and continuing to take advantage of communities as well." 

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Fr. Jim Reassigned to Parish in Brooklyn!
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Friday, May 21, 2010

It was announced last week that Father James Cunningham, Pastor of St. Mary Star of the Sea and St. Gertrude Parish, Far Rockaway, will be leaving the parish effective June 30. Father Cunningham has been appointed by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of the Diocese of Brooklyn to serve as the new Administrator of Holy Name of Jesus Parish in the Windsor Terrace section of Brooklyn.

Father Cunningham was appointed as the 18th Pastor of St. Mary Star of the Sea in January of 2002. In 2007 the parishes of St. Mary Star of the Sea and St. Gertrude were merged upon the death of Father Brendan W. Downing. At that time Father Cunningham was named as the 1st Pastor of the new parish of St. Mary Star of the Sea and St. Gertrude.

Father Cunningham is the youngest child of Robert and Eileen Cunningham of Woodside. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn on May 20, 1995. Prior to his service in Far Rockaway, Father Cunningham served as Associate Pastor of Good Shepherd Parish in Brooklyn and St. Bartholomew Parish in Elmhurst.

Since 2007 Father Cunningham has served as Chairman of the Board of the Margert Community Corporation. He is also the Chairman of the Board of The Tablet, the newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn.

The people of St. Mary Star of the Sea and St. Gertrude Parish will host a farewell Mass and reception for Father Cunningham on Tuesday, June 29 at 7:00 p.m. at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church – 1920 New Haven Avenue, Far Rockaway.

Friday, May 4, 2010...In a late breaking development, Bishop DiMarzio has asked Fr. Jim to remain in Far Rockaway until Labor Day!

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