Converted Courthouse Closet Now Used As Windowless Conference Room To Mediate (Non-Claustrophobic) Queens Foreclosures

In Jamaica, Queens, the New York Daily News reports:

• In the desperate battle to end New York's home foreclosure crisis, a windowless storage closet in a Queens courthouse serves as ground zero. The 6-feet-by-10-feet room has been turned into a conference room where banks and homeowners meet to work out their differences in a new statewide program aimed at keeping debtors from losing their homes.

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• Parents have shown up with kids in strollers, says Tracy Catapano-Fox, chief law clerk to the court's administrative judge. [...] Every week, about 250 to 300 conferences fill the calendar. The converted storage closet - repainted in March when Mayor Bloomberg visited to announce free legal services for the conferences - is now used on Mondays and Tuesdays. "That shows how desperate we are for space," Catapano-Fox says.

For the story, see Queens Supreme Court storage closet, now a conference room, helps families hold on to homes.