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Carolyn Bloodworth We’ve already seen how AmeriCorps members in Michigan are helping
kids learn, providing food to families in need, and reducing crime in urban neighborhoods.
As we will see in the next video, Michigan’s AmeriCorps members are also striving to end
homelessness in our state by reducing the number of foreclosures and helping to keep
Michigan families in their homes.
C.J. Felton Foreclosure is not just devastating to that particular family, but it’s also
devastating to the community that they live in. Housing values go down. We’ve seen cities
that have had to drastically alter their budgets.
Rachel Diskin The Michigan Foreclosure Prevention Corps is a group of twenty AmeriCorps members
who are addressing the foreclosure issue in the state of Michigan. They are kind of the
first person that a client sees when they need help with foreclosure. They also do outreach
and education about foreclosure in their local communities.
C.J. Felton Wow, it’s been a fantastic opportunity for us. Paul Stanford, who is our current
member, was our first member with the Foreclosure Prevention Corps. He joined us in October
and at the time we did not actually have full time foreclosure prevention services at Community
Housing Network.
Paul Stanford So basically my job here was to start the AmeriCorps – well, start the
foreclosure prevention program at Community Housing Network. They decided to hire an AmeriCorps
member and also a housing counselor to begin the program.
When the program first started here, we were getting flooded with a lot of calls. One of
the first main people that called me, she contacted us and her sheriff sale was three
weeks away. So what we did was we jumped right on it. We ended up getting, being able to
get that sheriff sale postponed. After that, she ended up receiving a permanent loan modification
and it was very reasonable for her. So she called us, thanked us, you know, and it’s
only at the department the two of us so she thanked both of us individually. So it was
really a great opportunity.
Steve Tobocman And these AmeriCorps members answering the phones and going to community
meetings and churches and knocking on doors really connected thousands of Michigan homeowners
facing a very scary future with foreclosure to the resources they need at foreclosure
counseling organizations.
C.J. Felton We could not work with as many people in foreclosure prevention as we do
were in not for our AmeriCorps member. Paul really handles all of the front end work and
we are anticipating that Paul’s going to join us on October 1st as a foreclosure prevention
counselor down in our Wayne office.
Paul Stanford It’s been a huge success for homeowners in Oakland and Macomb counties
and I’m excited to the do the same for people out in Wayne County also.
Rachel Diskin In addition to the Michigan Foreclosure Prevention Corps, there are other
AmeriCorps programs working on housing throughout the state of Michigan.
Matthew Butterfield There was an apartment complex and the owner had not been paying
his taxes to the city, but the tenants were. So one day we got a call from the mayor saying
that the city had shut off the water and the electricity for the apartment complex. It
was a complete shock for the people living there because they had been paying everything
on time. Like they thought… you know, they were just kind of getting by. And so I kind
of took it upon myself to make sure that we got these people rehoused and we got the funds
for them. And it was a successful program. A lot of those people are happily housed right
now.
Tamika Davis-Moore Over a period of three months we worked with her with housing searches
and trying to find someone that would rent to her with her limited income and getting
her back into mental health services. And so we just recently housed her last week and
she was just so overjoyed. Yesterday we went to see her. We took her some small household
items and she made the comment that God had dropped angels out of heaven to help her.
And I said, ‘No, we’re not angels; we’re just good people trying to help out.’