For Jamil Philistin and his family, it's a dream come true: They are keeping the house that they have called home for 23 years.
Philistin's family took advantage of a program established by judges in Miami-Dade to head off foreclosure.
"This program has kept thousands in their homes," said Rod Petrey of the Collins Center, who runs the program. "They would have had to have gone somewhere else and the home would have been taken by a formal legal process called foreclosure."
Instead of families coming to court to fight banks, under the program the banks must sit down face to face with families--no waiting forwever on the phone---and a meadiator tries to strike a deal. In the first month the program started, 258 families participated, last month over 4,000 did.
In all, more than 2,000 families have been able to save their homes by striking a deal with their bank to make their montly payments more affordable.
"They sit down with their lender and a mediator who helps them make an agreement," Petrey said. "A lot of times it's a reduction in the interest paid or a postponement in the paid total interest on the loan.
"It helps because it takes that many cases we were able to handle out of the courts."
The mediations are also helping anyone with a legal claim, a slip and fall or a businesses dispute get a resolution faster because judges care doing more now than just foreclosure cases.
For months, the courthouse was overrun with families struggling to save their home--thousands of foreclosures filed every month turning into financial and emotional tragedies and creating eyesores all over South Florida.
Simply put by Philistin: "I think the program is good for people to help save homes."
If you are behind on your payments or have gotten any paperwork from the bank that might lead to foreclosure, www.collinscenter.org.
