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The office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will be committing up to $40 million to aid organizations that work through the Homeowner Protection Program (HOPP) to provide housing counseling and legal services to struggling homeowners, Schneiderman announced on Monday.
The total amount of funding Schneiderman's office has committed to help New York homeowners stay in their homes now stands at close to $100 million. HOPP was created in 2012 with $60 million in funding from Schneiderman and since then has provided some type of relief to some 34,000 families who were either struggling to make mortgage payments or facing foreclosure, Schneiderman said.
"After just two years, our Homeowner Protection Program has helped tens of thousands of New Yorkers in danger of losing their homes. This additional $40 million extends my commitment to help homeowners and communities across New York recover from the devastating impact of the housing crisis," Schneiderman said. "No individual or family should have to navigate the foreclosure process alone. By funding housing counseling and legal services, we are keeping families in their homes and stabilizing struggling communities across the state of New York."
HOPP was intended to last three years upon its launch in 2012, but the latest addition in funding extended the program another two years. Schneiderman's offfice announced hat in its first two years, HOPP has allocated funding to 89 housing counseling agencies and legal services all over the state of New York, which in turn offer their services for free to struggling homeowners. Schneiderman announced the additional funding Monday along with a new report discussing HOPP entitled "Staying Home: A Report on the Second Year of New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s Homeowner Protection Program" at the annual conference for the New York State Coalition for Excellence in Homeownership Education in Albany.
"I commend Attorney General Schneiderman for his tireless efforts to assist New Yorkers through this initiative," Albany County Executive Daniel P. McCoy said. "Even today we are seeing the effects of the foreclosure crisis in the Capital District. Programs like HOPP provide the necessary resources for those residents who are desperately trying to hold on to their homes and it is worthy of our support."
