Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program Will Help Families Keep Homes

3,250 Pennsylvania homeowners can thank the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency for saving their home from foreclosure last year. Established in 1983, the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency has been offering Pennsylvanians suffering financial hardships—whether from unemployment, divorce, medical problems, etc.—mortgage relief of up to $60,000 for as long as three years. With the number of applicants jumping from the average 10,000 homeowners to a record 14,000 homeowners last year, an agency like this is just the kind of miracle Pennsylvanians, and the shaky housing market as a whole, needs.

Here’s how it works: the loan program receives information from lenders of potential foreclosures, and the program reviews cases that are “suffering temporary hardships beyond their control”. Each case is reviewed based on financial background, debts, and likeliness to land a job, and other factors that attributes to the success of a homeowner being aided by the program. “In 83% of cases, the agency wiped out borrowers’ arrears. For the remaining 17% of clients, it pays their monthly mortgage obligation,” states Yahoo! Finance.

The best part about this agency is that, unlike the bailout money that was handed to the banks, the results have been overwhelmingly positive. The initiative has distributed $450 million on behalf of 43,000 homeowners since it began in the 1980s, and has an impressive 80% success rate in helping homeowners avoid foreclosure. If other states had the foresight to establish similar initiatives to protect its residents, maybe we wouldn’t be in this dire of a housing crisis.

While there is less confidence in Obama’s loan modification program, which was intended to help those underwater on their mortgage, the Pennsylvania Agency has set the standard for similar programs in other states. A recent $1.5 billion federal initiative to help Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, and Nevada–the states hardest hit by the mortgage crisis–has officials making calls to Pennsylvania to learn how to replicate the successes of their program.