Cleveland Housing Advocacy Group Steps Up To Salvage Two Mismanaged Local Lease-To-Own Programs That Left 90 Rent-Paying, Aspiring Homebuyer-Families Facing Foreclosure

In Cleveland, Ohio, The Plain Dealer reports:

• A bailout of two rent-to-own programs will allow more than 90 low-income families to buy their houses in Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood, according to the Cleveland Housing Network.
  
  The housing advocacy agency has led a rescue that included buying mortgages and paying back taxes and penalties to keep the houses out of foreclosure and in the programs, said Rob Curry, the agency's executive director. "They're totally back from the edge," Curry said Monday.
  
  The programs date to the 1990s, when investor-backed partnerships built and leased the houses to low-income families with provisions allowing the renters to buy at below-market prices after 15 years.
  
  Most of the money to build the houses came from large corporations wanting to invest in low-income housing in return for substantial federal tax credits.
  
  But problems surfaced two years ago, when some renters looking to buy their houses discovered that the partnerships' management company had for years failed to pay property taxes.
  
  In April, 2011, Huntington National Bank moved to foreclose on a loan to one of the partnerships, Northeastern Neighborhood Homes Limited Partnership II, because more than $95,000 in taxes and penalties going back to 2007 had not been paid.

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• In launching a rescue effort, the Cleveland Housing Network and Neighborhood Progress Inc. negotiated to buy the mortgages, held by Huntington and Chicago-based Urban Partnership Bank, at discounted prices. [...] Carrie Rosenfelt, community development relationship manager at Huntington Bank, said Huntington sold its mortgage at a discount because of the Cleveland Housing Network's experience working with rent-to-own programs.

For more, see Coalition led by Cleveland Housing Network rescues rent-to-own housing programs in Glenville.