 Erin Scheithi from CFPB and Jacqueline Marcellos from Metta. Welcome Erin and Jacqueline. Thank you so much Doreen and I want to apologize in advance as we are working from home of course this is the time when I get a delivery so I hope you can hear me okay. I'd love to chat with you guys today about help for homeowners, renters and landlords during the pandemic. Before I get started I want to note that the presentation I'm about to make is being made by a consumer financial protection bureau representative on behalf of the bureau. It does not constitute legal interpretation guidance or advice of the CFPB and any opinions or views stated by me are my own and may not represent the bureau's views. So now that that is taken care of the first thing I want to tell you is just a brief introduction to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because I wonder how many folks are really aware of this new federal agency. I say new because we're about 11 and a half years old. We were created after the recession of the 2007-2008 housing bubble burst and a lot of people had trouble finding jobs. A lot of people were out of jobs and a lot of financial products and services are incredibly difficult for us to navigate. I've been doing this work for close to 20 years and I still have a lot of trouble figuring out what the right financial product is for that moment in time for the product that I need for my family to move forward. I think housing is one of the major issues why the CFPB was created because we were created after a lot of people took out mortgages and home loans that were not right for them and may not have been financially sound for their family. Housing insecurity remains a critical challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic and the one thing I want to start out by saying is that if the pandemic has caused you to struggle to pay for your housing, you are not alone. So many people have experienced the same thing because they either haven't been able to work due to the pandemic or because maybe they have been ill for a period of time during the pandemic. As certain legal protections begin to expire in the next several months, more than seven and a half million families are at risk of either eviction which would be being removed from a home that you rent or foreclosure which would be losing a home that you had purchased and had a mortgage on. For communities of color, this is even more profound. Black and Hispanic families are twice as likely to report being behind on their housing payments and an estimated nine and a half million households are behind on rent. So like I said, you're not alone. So if this is you, there are many others experiencing the same thing and there's really a lack of awareness about the options that may have been available to you or that are still available to you. There are protections for homeowners and renters and landlords who are struggling because of the pandemic, but not all protections are automatic. So you probably need to take some action in order to take advantage of these protections. So you will need to do a little bit of work to get some help. Many are still unaware of their rights or how to find that help. And so I am here from the CFPB today. And we've worked with other federal agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of the Treasury, the USDA Department of Agriculture, the Veterans Administration and several other federal partners. We're here to share our resources with you. So first, I'm going to talk a little bit about homeowner protections. Then I'll switch to protections for renters. I'll mention a couple of things for landlords as well. Perhaps you've heard about forbearance. This is when a homeowner has the ability to temporarily stop paying their mortgage payments by entering into this forbearance program. Many people have taken this option during the pandemic. They don't want to lose their home. So they reached out to their mortgage lender right away. Many of them spend hours and hours on hold trying to get in touch with their mortgage lender to tell them, I need help. And they entered into a forbearance program. Forbearance programs typically last a series of months. Maybe it's a year, maybe it's 18 months. And of course, as we all know, all too well. The pandemic has been happening. It's been going on for just about almost two years. So many of those forbearance programs have ended or are about to end. Less than a million folks in this country are in some kind of forbearance program today. There are also foreclosure protections available for homeowners. So if you have a mortgage and you submit an application for a foreclosure prevention program after that starts, but more than 37 days before maybe your home would go on the market for sale, you have options available. And there's also a program that we'll learn a little bit more about in the coming weeks called the Homeowner Assistance Fund. Congress, your elected senators and representatives authorized nearly $10 billion for mortgage payment assistance for homeowners insurance for you to pay your utilities like your electric bill and your water and sewer bill and other purposes. And so many states will start accepting those programs within the next couple of months. And some may have already started. So if you're coming to us from California, I don't believe they've started accepting applications for the half yet, but they will in the next few months. So as I mentioned, many folks who had a mortgage entered into a forbearance program. Most of the borrowers who have entered into this have already requested it, but borrowers can actually still request a hardship forbearance if they've experienced a hardship due to the pandemic. I want to mention right now we're at a crazy point in the pandemic, right? We're almost two years in, there's a new highly contagious variant. It's likely that whether we're vaccinated, boosted, all of that, we may get this virus at some point, if you haven't already. Luckily, vaccinations mean that hopefully you won't go into the hospital because of this. But I bring this up because many people have exhausted their savings at this point. Maybe you were doing okay, you were able to make it through, your business continued on, or you were able to still work. But now with the new variant, with restrictions kind of coming back into play, perhaps this has become difficult for you. Again, maybe you, like I said, have exhausted your savings. Maybe you've been sick for a month or two with COVID. And so you need some help. It's still possible to request a COVID hardship forbearance. The most important tip here is that it's not automatic, you must request it. And so you really need to be in communication with your mortgage lender, your mortgage servicer. So find out who that is. Go to however you pay your mortgage, whether it's an online or whether you pay using something through the mail. Check in with your mortgage servicer. If you need help, it is available. Or I'll say one thing too, if you need, if you are currently in a forbearance program and it's due to expire soon, you may be eligible for an additional extension. So check into that as well. But some of you may be getting ready to exit forbearance. And this can be a really, this can produce a lot of anxiety, right? You might feel really stressed. What am I supposed to do now? There are a lot of options. You can either defer your payments or pay a partial amount toward the sum of money that you did not pay on during your forbearance period. You could modify your loan. Most people go that route. They modify their loan. Either they make their term longer, meaning they instead of paying for 25 more years on a 30-year mortgage, maybe they bump that back out to 30 years. Others may enter a repayment plan where you pay extra each month. Let's say your mortgage payment is $1,000, but you can afford to pay $1,250 every month. You may be able to repay your mortgage forbearance that way. Rarely will you get a bill for every payment you missed over the last six, 12, or 18 months. And if that's the only option that your mortgage servicer offers you, ask them if there are other options available. Not all of the options are available to every borrower, but options should be available. And the best thing about this webinar is you are about to hear from Jackie, who is with a HUD-approved housing counseling agency. So you can certainly reach out to Metta for help. And help is free. You don't have to pay anyone to help you avoid foreclosure. So please remember that, because I think a lot of scammers come around and they say, oh, I can help you get out of that if you just pay me $1,000 or something like that. Help is free. And there are, like I said, a lot of common misconceptions, the two that I just mentioned. Either they think they'll have to pay the entire thing at once, or that they need to pay to exit this forbearance program. And some of you who either may have been in forbearance already or are sitting forbearance may be wondering how that affects your credit, because essentially you didn't pay for your housing for an entire month and that's for an entire year maybe. So that's something that would possibly go on your, that would definitely go on your credit report if you just didn't pay. But forbearance is a little bit different. It is sometimes noted on your credit report that you entered into a forbearance program, but typically that loan would not be considered delinquent. So it probably would not have a lasting negative effect on your credit history if you're in a forbearance program. If you're not in forbearance, then not paying your mortgage for months and months and months definitely has a lasting negative effect. So I want to make sure that that's clear. And let me know if you have any questions about that. Please put all of your questions into the chat and we'll address those after our presentations. Some, in some cases you may need to wait before you can get a new loan. A lot of people are taking advantage of refinancing options on their current mortgage. So after you exit forbearance, you may need to wait three or even 12 months of paying regular on-time payments in order to qualify for your new loan. And definitely check your credit report. You can actually check them at annualcreditreport.com for free. Don't go to freecreditreport.com, go to annualreport.com, which is a website operated by the three major credit reporting agencies and the federal government. And so you are allowed to get weekly credit reports for free at least through April 22nd. And that may be extended. So that's a little bit about homeowners and the help that's available for them. I want to talk a little bit about renters. 35% of all US households are renters. And you can see I broke this down further by racial and ethnic groups here. So one thing I know we're in San Francisco. I am in Washington D.C. right now. So we're both living in extremely expensive areas, right? It's extremely expensive to afford housing in our respective communities. I think San Francisco is number two after New York or something. And D.C. is not far behind. So the percentage of renters in your city is likely a bit higher than this, just because when real estate is so expensive, often people rent instead of owning their homes. So I just want to mention that that renters are actually growing as well. The percentage you can see here on this screen in 2004, it was less. So there were fewer of every group renting. And these days, it's a bit higher. And that could be for a lot of reasons, which we'll get, which we aren't discussing during this webinar. But if you're interested in that, our website has some information about why that might be the case. But there are a lot of renters, and there are a lot of landlords. And in fact, small landlords, meaning landlords who own fewer than 10 rental units, represent an important source of affordable housing. And they are also vulnerable to rent shortfalls. So it's hard, especially if you're a renter who's experienced financial trouble during the pandemic, it's hard to think about your landlord and how he or she may have also experienced difficulty with paying for their rental or for their mortgage on the building, maybe that you live in. But these smaller landlords sometimes have mortgages on their properties, and they're counting on the rent from their tenants to pay that mortgage. So you can see here that 70 to 79% of landlords have a mortgage on their property, and some even own only one property. So they may have a mortgage on that. Housing and security also remains a critical challenge for older adults. My full-time job with the CFPB is in our office for older Americans. So I typically work on programs for adults 62 and older. So I bear with me, I stuck a couple slides in here about this because I think it's really important. Some of you may be in families where there are parents and grandparents and nieces and nephews and children all living in the home. And that's a good thing. But things have changed for older adults during the pandemic. A higher percentage of them are 45% are likely or very likely to lose their rental housing in the next two months. And that was something that came out in September of last year. So we imagine it's even a little bit higher now. So just something to think about that there are some older adults who are experiencing this issue as well. So there are protections available for renters. There was an eviction moratorium. And what that means, it's kind of a fancy word there. But what it means is that until late August of this past year, if you didn't pay your rent, your landlord likely could not legally evict you. Now what we have learned is that there were still evictions happening. Sometimes your landlord gave you an eviction notice and wasn't supposed to. But maybe you didn't know that there was a moratorium in place. So that's why I mentioned that. There's a nonprofit called eviction lab. And there are a lot of state and local eviction policies on their website. So because I'm not local to San Francisco to California, I can't tell you much about the eviction protections there. But what I can do is suggest that you check out the eviction lab and see what's available in your area. And like I said, many jurisdictions are working. They want to work with renters and landlords so that you don't have to lose your home because there's pretty much nothing worse than losing your home during a time like this. There's also emergency rental assistance, which is available from the federal government from the Department of Treasury. And we at the CFPB are helping to get the word out about local rental assistance programs. More than $45 billion in two separate phases was authorized by Congress and distributed to local programs. Most of the time, you need help from your landlord to qualify for emergency rental assistance to apply for emergency rental assistance. But so it's just like it's important as a homeowner to reach out to your mortgage servicer, it's incredibly important to reach out to your landlord as a renter if you're experiencing issues paying your rent. Most landlords want to help you because that way they get money, they get paid when you're not able to pay your rent. The money can be used not just for unpaid rent, but also for your electric or your heating bills. It could also cover future rent or moving costs or hotel stays even if you are displaced from your home. So definitely if you need help, find a local program. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, scammers try to take advantage of people during times like this, a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty. And scammers might use official government logos or create logos that look almost just like it or official websites, but they aren't official. So I just want to note that the federal government will not ask you for your personal or financial information. So if you're applying for some of these rental assistance programs, you'll have to fill out some personal information, but you should never have to give your credit card number. You should never have to give your bank account number or your online banking login. And local programs do not charge a fee for these applications. So please keep that in mind. And landlords can apply for rental assistance as well. So if you're on this webinar and you're a landlord and you know some of your tenants are struggling, you may be eligible and you don't necessarily need to work with your tenant to apply for rental assistance. If you are a survivor of domestic violence, if you are experiencing housing discrimination or if you have a bad landlord, and I put a couple of things there, a landlord who forces you out or refuses to make necessary repairs like fixing the heat or the water, something like that, there are protections available to you. This is the website, consumerfinance.gov slash renterhelp. So please visit that website to get help. And like I said, help is available not only from a housing counselor as you're about to hear from one, but also if your landlord is threatening to evict you or you need help understanding your rights, you could qualify for free legal assistance. So you can contact your local bar association or legal aid office for more information. And I know there are some links in this slide. You're going to get a copy of these slides after the webinar, so you can check those out at that time. We have a website consumerfinance.gov slash housing where all of the information that I just shared is located. So it's super convenient and you don't have to worry about writing down a bunch of links right now. Go to consumerfinance.gov and that's where you can find the housing information, the rental assistance finder. So you can look up your state and your program. You can find help if you've lost housing. So if you are finding yourself sleeping on someone's couch, staying in temporary housing, we do have some help there that you may be able to find. So check in on that resource as well. And finally, we have COVID-19 resources other than housing. So check those out at our website. This is the last thing that I'll say before I turn it over to Jackie who's going to give you some terrific information that's a little bit more local about her program. The CFPB accepts complaints on some products and services in the financial marketplace, including mortgages and including debt collectors. So if you believe that either your mortgage servicer or a debt collector is treating you unfairly or if you think there's an issue, you may submit a complaint to the CFPB. For example, if you are trying to call your mortgage servicer to go into a forbearance program and the wait times are hours and hours long or you get the run around, they hang up on you, you don't call back, whatever, submit a complaint to the CFPB. We also accept complaints about bank accounts, credit cards, student loans, a variety of different products and services so in the financial marketplace. So visit consumerfinance.gov slash complaint and you can find a little bit more about our complaint process. And with that, I will stop sharing and turn it over to Jackie. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. It was a great information. I really appreciate that. And I think we are the ones who are doing all that. My name is Jacqueline Marcellos. I am from the Mission Economic Development Agency. The associate director of the asset building program also run the housing opportunity programs at MEDA. In this program we are offering or is divided in three. We have pre-purchase services if you are trying to be a new homeowner. We also have the foreclosure prevention area that we call it the post-purchase and also we have the rental area. And as we hear previously when this CFPB presentation, we are able to work with you in the program, the post-purchase. If you are in the final months for the forbearance and we are able to help you to continue to try to get a loan modification or a payment plan or and see what other options are available for you, especially depending on the type of loan that you might have. We work also with the city to get the applications for the help loan. And two type of loans is a copy help loan that can also help you to pay for homeowner's association if you are behind or future homeowner's associations as well. And we have the help loan that can pay up to $50,000 when you are behind on your mortgage loan. It doesn't have to be part of the loan through the city. It could be anybody. This one is specific for San Francisco. So we are able to have that. We have one, two housing counselors. They are specialized in the post-purchase area. Anything for loan modification if you need to refinance or we need to work out and after your forbearance or you know it is almost ending. For the area of the homeowner's association, well, we provide workshops. I think we all our workshops are in our Evan Bright meta page that I believe we can add it to the chat for the link if you are interested to participate in this. Also, these programs for homeownership, we offer the Moe CD orientation that we can let you know what programs through the city are able to help you with the down payment assistance. We offer a 101 counseling sessions for this. It is very in a specific and unique program. Also, these ones are for San Francisco. If you are trying to buy with the down payment assistance program, we have other counties that they don't have a hot counselors in their area and they are able to take the classes with us and also take the education and the counseling and they can apply to their own counties. All these programs are free. You don't have to pay for anything. Finally, we have the rental area. Our role as an organization meta, we help you to apply on the Dahlia portal that is the city portal for all the units are available in the city of San Francisco. We also help you for the rental area to do the recertifications as you are a part of these units in San Francisco. They are run through the city. You need to get a recertification or income recertification every year. We also help with that. If you apply and you get denied because any reason, we also help with the appeals. Usually, we get referrals to home ownership staff that is a collaboration of five organizations that we all have certified and we provide almost the same services. Also, I want to let you know that we have a partnership with the Latino Task Force and we have a mission hub where we are offering services in person. We offer services Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9.30 to 3.30pm. Sometimes it's difficult to send documents through email or through the phone or simply it's just it's not an option for you. We are able to help you with in person appointments. Of course, we are taking all the precautions for the COVID before you enter into the building. I don't know if you guys have questions so we can accommodate this. I don't see or if you can let me know if there are any questions regarding our services. So far, no questions. I don't know if you want me to talk more about what other services we provide at the mission hub as we have partnered with the Latino Task Force. Also, at the mission hub, we are providing rental relief applications. We connect you with a counselor and also we have our group of promotoras. They are also helping clients to apply for this rental relief. We follow up and we monitor every single application until it goes through. We also offer the mission hub vaccinations in case you know that we are not able to come in because you are not a full vaccinated. We can set it up on appointments so you can get the vaccinations. Also, we are going to start our tax season next week. We are going to have a virtual taxes and also in-person taxes and drop-off taxes. We are trying to accommodate you know as much as we can for all our tax clients that they need to file their taxes. As I mentioned, all our services are free. We are not charging anything for a taxes. We also are a COS certified agency that we are able to solicitate your IT number for first time or if you need to renew your IT. We have the capacity to do it as well. All our tax appointments are going to be in our hotline for number that is going to be on our website. We are going to be opening a plaza delante. The address is 2301 Mission Street. We will have appointments from 9.30 until 6 p.m. and sometimes you know we stay there until 9 o'clock because there's so many clients. But we're going to have a special website that you can also book your appointment for taxes. Thank you for adding that information. And also if you want to help us to volunteer as a tax preparer, we are offering this Saturday coming is our last training to learn how to be a tax volunteer. You would need to get a certification. You need to pass a test for taxes and we will help you and teach you how to help others for our community that is so much in need to have these free services. It looks like there's a couple of questions in the chat. Sure. Okay, I'll go back to the first one. Okay. Do homeowners have to do recertification every year? You're supposed to have a recertification every year. As far as being hearing with some homeowners, not too many homeowners have received that documentation, but it's mostly for renters. And then do you have buyer preparedness, COAH and not Dahlia? I don't know what that acronym stands for. And then maybe coach. Oh, that can be. Yes. So not necessarily, as we mentioned, no, it's not 100% necessary that you need to buy through Dahlia. Dahlia is the properties are available through the city. And if you're going to use down payment assistance through the city of San Francisco, but if you want to buy an Auckland or you want to buy in whatever here in Bay Area, and you are not going to use any down payment assistance program to the city, yes, we can still see you. Definitely any information that you need to buy a house, we can help you with the coaching because, you know, in the coaching session, we let you know this is how much you qualify for approximately, or if we need to fix your credit report before you apply. Also, we recently have we have a client who registered for just a house in BMI union with the 19 that is a great win-win for us. Because this is the first time and we were fighting too much to have this this success stories, clients with IP invite in the home in San Francisco. So we have our first one. I'm so proud of that. And we want to have more. And yes, it doesn't matter where you want to buy, it doesn't matter if you don't want to buy with the San Francisco down payment assistance, we are able to take your case and we are able to help you. Yeah, no problem. That kind of answers the next question. Are your housing services for anyone or for certain groups? No, no, no, you of course our mission is more based for Latinos, but we help anybody, anybody who comes to the door, we are able to help. No problem. Okay, services are free. So that catches us up. We've got a few more minutes. Does is there anyone else who has questions? Feel free to put those in the chat. This is your chance. And of course, we will send out the recording for this program along with the slides. Yes, and I'll also include some of the links that Jacqueline mentioned in my email to everyone. So don't worry if you didn't get a chance to write it down. So let's see anybody else questions. Do either of you have any thoughts that you want to share? Well, I can say that we personally as a coach, I've been using this a lot of the services that CFPB have also submitting a lot of complaints with a great success. So we use it and it's great. And it's just having information and, you know, getting the right contact person and know that you can, you can speak up about any fraudulent situations that you are facing. Right now, it's a lot, a lot of stuff going on, a lot of scans. So just be aware before you enter any contract or somebody sending you flyers to your house or letters that they can help you because it's really important to be aware of the situations. If you have any question, like, oh, I received this letter. I don't know if this is real. Also check with us and we might be able to help you with that. Thank you for mentioning that. And Erin, do you have any last thoughts? Yeah, the last thing that I would say, I think we have one more question, but, you know, I think what's great about a partnership like this one is that we're able to kind of set the big picture. You know, I've told you kind of what's been going on over the past two years, what help is available federally, and then you have your local resource. So that's a great thing when we can work together. Yeah, the dogs have a lot to say. Okay, we do have another question. Are you able to assist with applications for rent assistance that have already been submitted? You mean for the rental relief? That's for that. We have a person that we that's just able to check on that. Or also, you know, we have counselors that we are able to log in into our account and verify what's missing or we can call on your behalf. And you know, yes, we are able to check on that. Okay, great. Okay, it looks like we've answered everything in the chat. Okay, well, I want to thank both of you, Erin and Jacqueline, for taking the time to share this information with the community. It's great to hear about all these programs. And thank you for bringing all these resources. We really appreciate it. We will be following up with an email so everybody will get this information. And I want to thank everyone for joining us today. We love having you know, we miss seeing the public in person live, but we were so we're so happy that that people are still engaging with the library. So thank you all. And with that, I'm going to end the program. So I want to tell you all have a great rest of the day. Stay safe. Thank you for your interest and thank you for coming to library programs. Thank you, Erin and Jacqueline so much. Take care. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye bye.