Neighborhood House Association (NHA) is an approved counseling agency to help hard-hit homeowners in San Diego County to learn more about Keep Your Home California, a state-run program with $2 billion in federal funding.

Counselors with NHA are available to answer questions about Keep Your Home California and help homeowners determine their initial eligibility.

Keep Your Home California is an effort to stabilize neighborhoods and communities by helping families who have suffered some type of economic hardship save their homes. More than 10,000 homeowners have either received funding or are in the process of getting financial help from the program.

“NHA is a critical partner in helping homeowners, their communities and the success of Keep Your Home California,” said Claudia Cappio, executive director of the California Housing Finance Agency. The Sacramento-based agency manages Keep Your Home California.

NHA offers free, in-person counseling for homeowners looking to apply for the mortgage assistance program. Keep Your Home California has four programs for eligible homeowners:

Unemployment Mortgage Assistance – Mortgage assistance of up to $3,000 per month for nine months for home-owners collecting unemployment benefits and in danger of defaulting on their home loans.¨ Mortgage Reinstatement Assistance – As much as $20,000 per household to reinstate mortgages to prevent foreclosure. Funds are available to homeowners who have fallen behind on their payments due to a temporary change in household income.¨

Principal Reduction – Lowers the principal of a mortgage when the homeowner is facing a critical financial hardship and owes significantly more than the home is worth. This program requires lenders to agree to a dollar-for-dollar match of assistance provided through Keep Your Home California. Principal reductions can be as much as $100,000, including the match from the lender.

Transition Assistance – Provides up to $5,000 in relocation assistance for home-owners who can no longer afford their home and their mortgage servicer agrees to a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.

“These counseling agencies and counselors know their communities and Keep Your Home California, and they can walk homeowners through the process every step of the way,” Ms. Cappio said.

Keep Your Home California is funded under the U.S. Treasury Department’s Hardest Hit Fund aimed to help low and moderate income home-owners struggling with their mortgage payments during the worst economy and housing market in generations.

To qualify for assistance from Keep Your Home California, homeowners must own and occupy the home they are trying to save, meet county-specific income limits and be facing a financial hardship. Each of the mortgage assistance programs detailed above requires participation of the homeowner’s mortgage servicer. Currently, more than 50 mortgage servicers participate in the program, covering about 90 percent of the mortgages in the state.

For more information, please call Neighborhood House Association at 619-263-7761.

A complete description of Keep Your Home California – including eligibility, frequently asked questions and informational videos – can be found at www.KeepYourHomeCalifornia.org or www.ConservaTuCasaCalifornia.org, the Spanish-language site.