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| 10/9/2008
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Los Angeles Neighborhood Housing Services (LA NHS) is a non-profit, community-based lender and developer, committed to the creation and preservation of wealth through self-sufficiency for families of modest means and revitalizing underserved neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles County. LA NHS works to build stronger communities by creating healthier neighborhoods. Over the last 24 years, LA NHS has developed and rehabilitated more than 11,000 housing and commercial units, educated and counseled over 90,000 homebuyers, 1.2 million families through financial literacy training, created 175 block clubs, employed 200 neighborhood youth, and invested more than $1.9 billion back into some of Los Angeles’ toughest neighborhoods. As a lender to these underserved communities, LA NHS has maintained a loan portfolio with a 3% or less delinquency rate and no foreclosures. LA NHS saw a disturbing increase in foreclosures in some of its target neighborhoods in 2003. Around that time, LA NHS joined forces with the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University to better understand the increase of foreclosures in Los Angeles. In the city, many foreclosures were concentrated in the lowest-income areas that also had the highest concentrations of minority homeowners. The data revealed more than 70 ‘hot spots’ within the city of Los Angeles in which foreclosures were happening at seven times the rate of foreclosures in the rest of the County. These hot spots were also the highest minority, lowest income quartiles in the city of Los Angeles. In response to the growing foreclosure crisis in Los Angeles, LA NHS established in April, 2007 an immediate and sustainable solution to apply appropriate strategies for dealing with foreclosures and homeownership preservation: The Los Angeles County NeighborWorks® Center for Foreclosure Solutions, (CFS). The CFS is a coalition of government, financial institutions, consumer protection attorneys, housing counseling agencies and advocacy groups striving to find solutions to the growing problem of foreclosures. For the past year, LA NHS found itself in the “eye of the foreclosure storm.” As of July 31, 2008, Los Angeles County experienced a 65% increase over the total number of foreclosures experienced in 2007. Key strategies of the CFS effort include: researching innovative solutions, reaching out to homeowners, building counseling capacity, reinvesting in communities and families and partnering through real estate. |
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