Home Sweet Home

Colorado ACORN has a new weapon in its fight to end the foreclosure crisis. It's still lobbying for tighter regulation of sub-prime lending and using direct action to get big lenders to change their practices. But today, the community organization is also bringing struggling borrowers face-to-face with the banks they owe instead of waiting on hold while they're transferred from one person to the next. "We've got a lot of people who need help right now and are in danger of losing their homes right away," says organizer Karen Rigot. "This is a way to get immediate, direct assistance to the people."

At the Save Our Homes Foreclosure Prevention Fair, representatives of Countrywide, HSBC and Chase will sit down to work out loans directly with their borrowers. And borrowers whose loans are not owned by one of those banks can sit down with HUD-certified housing counselors to crunch numbers and assess the options they might qualify for. There will also be workshops on first-time home-buying and foreclosure prevention.

Call 303-534-1948 to pre-register and find out which documents you need to bring along. The fair goes from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Mi Casa Resource Center, 360 Acoma Street. For more information, go to www.acorn.org.
Sat., Jan. 26, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., 2008