Group offers help for struggling homeowners

Struggling homeowners in Prince William County, Manassas and Manassas Park may be getting relief this week thanks to an outreach program by Bank of America brought about in part by a face-to-face meeting two months ago.

Starting Tuesday,  the bank —one of the country’s largest mortgage service providers — is offering assistance to homeowners to modify their mortgages at the Prince William Association of Realtors building in Woodbridge.

The event is the result of Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement and housing counselor organizations drawing attention to the troubles in the county and area cities.

Representatives from both VOICE and Bank of America met several times since May and also held weekly telephone conference calls in coming up with a solution.

“This week is the culmination of all that dialogue,” said the Rev. Clyde Ellis, pastor at Woodbridge’s Mount Olive Baptist Church.

“Bank of America, along with VOICE, we’re trying to regain the trust in the community. Homeowners have begun to lose confidence in the banking industry,” he said.

Laurence Richardson, who manages Bank of America’s Customer Assistance Center in Alexandria, was on hand Tuesday to oversee the execution of program.

“An event like what we’re doing today,” Richardson said, “we go out to provide solutions in communities where our customers live. We utilize our banking center footprint or meeting locations like here today. This, today, demonstrates our commitment to serve our customers.”

Once the five-day event was finalized, Bank of America mailed 2,500 invitations to customers in the county, particularly ones who were either delinquent or close to delinquency on their mortgages.

Nearly 150 homeowners pre-registered for the event, according to Bank of America. Walk-in appointments are also being accepted and VOICE and the bank anticipate about 200 people to take advantage of the opportunity.

Some borrowers in Prince William, Manassas and Manassas Park have had to wait for a year for decisions on mortgage modification applications with the bank, but this week they will get an answer the same day.

“Many homeowners have been in the system for quite some time,” Richardson said. “This is an effort to really speed up the decision-making for our customers.”

On April 10, VOICE — a non-partisan, multi-faith and multi-cultural coalition made up of more than 40 religious and civic institutions — gathered troubled homeowners in Georgetown South at the neighborhood’s community center in Manassas to offer a chance for affected borrowers to speak against unfair lending practices used by banks.

Afterwards, the crowd walked through Georgetown South to two affected properties in the neighborhood.

“We were hearing common themes about modifying loans,” Ellis said. “The decision was taking as much as a year, during which other things, like foreclosure, were taking place.

“Part of our campaign,” he continued, “was to engage Bank of America in an effort to bring them to Prince William County.”

VOICE contends that since market troubles between 2004 and 2009, about 16,000 homeowners in the area have suffered foreclosure.

Also, Bank of America’s income in its last quarter dropped 39 percent due to higher costs related to mortgages and legal expenses stemming from foreclosure litigations, too.

Ellis traveled in May to Charlotte, N.C. to speak at Bank of America’s annual shareholders meeting, confronting CEO Brian Moynihan directly.

“Come to Prince William County and I will show you disaster,” Ellis said at the meeting.
After speaking, Ellis said he met Moynihan personally and was quickly directed to Rebecca Mairone, Default Servicing Executive for Bank of America Home Loans.

“She gave me her card and said to call her,” Ellis said. “I did the next day and the rest is history. ... She flew in from California, brought her staff, and Mr. Richardson, who is local here, and we started immediately putting together what you see here today. It happened quickly. That initial meeting happened within a week of the shareholders meeting.”

Ellis wasn’t sure what kind of response he would get before flying to Charlotte, however.

“I’m a pastor,” Ellis said, “and I live by something called hope and faith. When I got on that airplane that morning, I had a whole lot of hope and a whole lot of faith. If I bring the hope and faith to the table, I leave the results to God.”

But that “hope and faith” paid off in the end.

Ellis said the response he received from the bank’s executives was so positive he could hardly contain himself on his flight home that night.

“Our church was having an activity that evening,” Ellis said, “and I was so excited that I stopped by the church and I interrupted what was going on to tell them what happened in Charlotte just a few hours before.”

VOICE anticipates that J.P. Morgan Chase may soon follow Bank of America’s lead.

“Hopefully very soon they’ll have something to say about a similar even in Prince William County,” Ellis said.

Staff writer Joe Conroy can be reached at 703-530-3912.  The Associated Press contributed to this report.