OVERVIEW
The SONYMA Community Restoration Fund (CRF) is part of New York State Office of Homes and Community Renewal’s response to the foreclosure crisis, a program that acquires pools of defaulted mortgages and provides homeowners with an opportunity to start fresh with a more affordable payment. This program focuses on keeping families in their homes and ensuring that abandoned homes are quickly sold to owner occupant buyers whenever possible. The CRF reinforces numerous other state and local efforts aimed at reducing foreclosure rates and stabilizing neighborhoods. In this way, the fund helps areas avoid blight and its associated strains on municipal budgets while keeping neighborhoods active and growing.
Key to the program’s success is SONYMA’s partnership with local nonprofit foreclosure prevention experts across the state to help families through the restructure process and assist with essential repairs.
Program Background
SONYMA joined forces with New Jersey Community Capital (NJCC), a nonprofit community development financial institution, to purchase approximately 570 troubled mortgage notes to revitalize distressed communities and boost housing markets across New York State. Every borrower whose note was one of the nearly 570 in the loan sales has been contacted by a local nonprofit foreclosure prevention expert. To verify that you have been legitimately contacted, click here for a list of the nonprofit experts assisting in this effort. To keep the original owners affordably in their homes, the CRF program works in ways that public and private servicers cannot, including engaging a network of locally based nonprofit housing counseling organizations that provide one-on-one counseling with the owner, and possibly facilitating completion of necessary health and safety repairs. In cases where a mortgage modification is not possible and the homeowner cannot financially support a reduced mortgage or no longer wants to own their home, the CRF, through its nonprofit partners, can offer resources and support to help the owner get a fresh start, while ensuring that the property is not abandoned, is quickly repaired and resold as affordable housing to a qualified buyer. The program is designed to be flexible and self-sustaining by reinvesting resources recovered when the new mortgages are repaid, or when properties are sold.
Funding Availability
Notice of Funding Availability for the Community Land Trust Loan Fund Community Land Trust Loan Fund: The SONYMA CRF makes available $1 million to create and preserve permanently affordable homes for low-income home buyers and renters. Established Community Development Financial Institutions across the state have until Tuesday July 31, 2018 to apply to be administrators of the CLT Loan Fund.
• Notice of Funding Availability - NOFA