Foreclosure Project
Overview
Foreclosure Intake Line: 212.382.6766
With foreclosures mounting citywide and disproportionately affecting lower income New Yorkers, the City Bar Justice Center has risen to the challenge with its Foreclosure Project. The project provides legal assistance to low- and moderate-income homeowners facing foreclosure, with the goal of keeping people in their homes whenever possible.
Volunteer lawyers are recruited and trained primarily to negotiate workout arrangements with lenders and attend settlement conferences. Occasionally, where appropriate, volunteers may represent the homeowner in litigation.
The project began in June 2008, when the CBJC created the Lawyers' Foreclosure Intervention Network in partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The project now receives additional funding from the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal and NYC Service.
The project is now staffed by the Project Director, two Staff Attorneys, a Project Coordinator, and a Paralegal.
The Foreclosure Project currently has over 200 trained volunteer attorneys available to take cases. The Project has assisted approximately 400 homeowners in various stages of foreclosure since its inception.
In helping to stem the rising tide of foreclosures, the Foreclosure Project not only provides valuable services to individual homeowners but helps protect some of New York City's most vulnerable neighborhoods from the economic fallout caused by this crisis.
LFIN receives additional funding through the New York State Attorney General Homeownership Protection Program.
For additional information on free services to prevent foreclosure, call 311 and ask for the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, or visit http://www.cnycn.org.
Justice Center Testifies at New York State Assembly Foreclosure Hearings
Lynn Armentrout, the director of the City Bar Justice Center's Foreclosure Project, testified on November 17th, 2010, at a New York State Assembly public hearing on the "Impact of the Mortgage Foreclosure Process and Crisis."