Hawthorne's CURA Research Assistant Will Handle Toxic Mortgage Data

Photo By John Hoff, University of Minnesota

Today, Jeff Skrenes gave me more details about what our CURA research assistant will be doing, once that person gets hired...

Hawthorne has been granted a research assistant from the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota. According to Jeff, the CURA assistant was made possible through Hawthorne's partnership with NCRC (Northside Community Reinvestment Coalition).

NCRC has found a way to track when and where Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) are resetting in North Minneapolis. Other data available gets only to the zip code or census tract level, but we already know where foreclosures are happening based on this criteria. The new data, however, will allow us to track this house by house.

NCRC will be compiling this data for all of North Minneapolis, and doing outreach to those at risk of foreclosure. (Click here for a related story, and also here)

The CURA assistant will compile the ARM data as well as "real time" information on how successful our outreach is. We already have data from 2007 mortgages originated in Hawthorne, Jordan, Near North, Willard-Hay and Harrison. One quarter of those loans were ARMs, despite the fact that in the final four months of that year, many of the worst practices were made illegal through Minnesota's landmark anti-predatory lending legislation.

Outreach has been done to almost 500 homes already, (click here for related story, also click here) and foreclosure prevention counselors are reporting calls where clients mention letters and visits associated with the outreach effort. These foreclosure prevention counselors work for ACORN Housing, NRRC, and Habitat for Humanity.

Special thanks goes out not only to the foreclosure prevention counselors, but to Dave Snyder of Jewish Community Action, Jerry Moore of Jordan Area Community Council, and Jeffrey Strand at Hennepin County for their efforts in making this work successful.