At a news briefing co-hosted by California Black Media and Ethnic Media Services in collaboration with the California Housing Finance Agency, speakers – Linda Jackson is the Executive Director of the Inland Empire Resource Center; Eric Johnson is the Information Officer for Marketing and Communications Division at the California Housing Finance Agency; and Maeve Elise Brown is Executive Director and founder of Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, and is a graduate of UCLA Law School – focused on the millions of California homeowners, first time home buyers, renters, small landlords, currently facing the threat of foreclosure or getting evicted or never being able to buy a home. With eviction moratoriums ending and pandemic-related relief packages timed out, people feel there’s nowhere to turn.

Eric Johnson is the Information Officer for Marketing and Communications Division at the California Housing Finance Agency; Linda Jackson is the Executive Director of the Inland Empire Resource Center; and Maeve Elise Brown is Executive Director and founder of Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, and is a graduate of UCLA Law School. (EMS/Siliconeer)

There is free housing counseling available across the state. Help from real people, rather than complicated online applications, that wind up with dead ends.

Speakers including veteran housing counselors discussed some of the options in addition to current foreclosure and eviction protections that may be available. Two people at the center of the housing storm spoke about the free help they received from HUD-certified housing counselors to resolve their challenges.

Eric Johnson said, “There is help for California homeowners, folks who are renting, small landlords, anybody who’s involved in housing at all. First-off a little bit about the scope of the problem. As of January there were 721,000 families who owed more than $3.3 billion in back rent. That’s more than $3 billion owed that was late rent.

“Think of the mom-and-pop landlords who make up a really large portion of the people who rent out places in California. It’s not just large companies with the big complexes, it’s duplexes, quadplexes, it’s somebody’s ADU in their backyard. Somebody who’s trying to need that rent money in order to make their mortgage payment, so it cascades up the other really important statistic, that the majority of people who are rent-burned in California, who pay more than 50 percent of their income towards rent, the majority of the severely rent-burned do not speak English as a first language.

“There is help. The National Mortgage Settlement Counseling Program in California has about $75 million to help people get free counseling at dozens of housing accounts and agencies around the state. These housing counseling agencies are HUD-approved. The federal government has approved both the counselors in the agency and the agencies themselves.

There may be folks out there who are offering counseling that will be monetized asking for charges, that’s bad. There’s fraud going out there, just like there was back in the great recession 12 years ago. People offer to pay off for loan.

“You want to talk to a HUD-approved counselor because those are the people who can help you out and their help is free. If somebody asks somebody for money to help them with their house situation, run away as fast as you can because those people aren’t going to help you. You always want to go to the free counseling.

“How it works is we have a very simple website, you can Google it at CalHFA NMS. You can call a number where you’ll be directed to someone who can help you out. We have a list of housing counseling agencies on the website right now. We have 76 different counseling agencies that employ more than 217 housing counselors. It’s so important to talk to human who can talk to you in-language and get you the help you need. When you are able to talk to one of these counselors, they’ll have you come in, you can also do it remotely via your camera, you can do counseling just over the phone if you don’t have an internet connection.

“You can talk to people who are having difficulties with the rent, people who are small landlords, difficulties with their mortgage, on the back side people who are homeowners who are worried about foreclosure, also people who are looking to buy their first home, people who rent and who maybe have enough money think it’s time to make the leap.

“These counselors can also help the folks who are trying to build their first home. So far we’ve helped about 23,000 families through this program and we have the money and the capacity to help a whole lot more. There are some expirations coming up. March 31st is the end of the period where people can apply for emergency rental assistance in California,” concluded Johnson.

Linda Jackson said, “The rental relief is not just for tenants, it is for the landlords, but the one thing landlords must know is that it really is going to go to the landlord to make sure that the information that the tenant has put in, you agree with it, and also you want to make sure there is no fraud, to make sure there is a tenant there, who is trying to collect. The money will never go to the tenant, it will always go to the landlord.

“The California Mortgage Relief Program is a grant to homeowners that are behind in their mortgage,” said Jackson.

Tony Stovall gave first-hand account as a renter facing the possible possibility of eviction and reaching out to housing counseling support.