Comment-in support of maintaining the Florida Statewide Homestead Mortgage Mediation Program - Submitted Oct 3 2011 by Elizabeth M. Boyle, Gulfcoast Legal Services, Inc.

 The Florida Supreme Court is convening committees to review the Statewide Mediation Program just over a year after the program's inception.  Here is a link to the website: http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/pub_info/foreclosure.shtml    I urge you to make your voice heard. As a legal aid attorney I have helped hundreds of Florida homeowners who have found themselves in the precarious and extremely frightening situation of losing their family home as a result of the sudden, unprecedented financial crisis.  At the end of 2011, we are only beginning to understand the depth of the recession following the near collapse of the American financial system in September of 2008.  In the newspaper on October 1, 2011, it was reported that in Manatee and Sarasota counties in Florida over 46,000 jobs were lost during this period.  One in 4 residential homes in Florida have been adversely affected by this crisis.  The remedy of foreclosure was not meant to be employed on a massive scale, against 1 in 4 families all at once.  The fact that so many people are subjected to homestead foreclosure at one time points to the fact that the lenders improvidently changed the rules of lending.  Using homestead property to collateralize an unsustainable loan is, on the part of the lender, a predatory practice.  To allow foreclosure of the homestead violates the principal of Florida’s constitutional homestead protection.  This widespread use of foreclosure has destabilized thousands of communities at the same time. COMMENT: Keep the Florida Statewide homestead mediation program as it is and continue the program indefinitely. Thank you.