More than 3,400 seek foreclosure mediation

More than 3,400 homeowners have filed for help since the state's foreclosure Mediation Program started July 1.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Jim Hardesty said 372 mediations have already been conducted, putting homeowners facing foreclosure in the same room with lenders to try find an alternative. He said another 805 have been scheduled and 1,401 cases assigned to mediators.

Homeowners who receive notices of default have 30 days to ask for mediation under the program created by the 2009 Legislature. Mediators, many of them volunteer lawyers and retired judges, are charged with holding mediation meetings within 90 days after the default notice is filed.

The maximum charge to the homeowner for mediation is just $200 and lawmakers who created it say the goal is to find ways of keeping single family homeowners in their homes rather than foreclosing.

Because of the growing workload, Hardesty said about 80 more mediators are being added to the 95 already certified for the program.

He said the bottleneck at this point is that the computerized case management system is just coming on line. Until it is fully operational, he said staff is working with "stacks and stacks of paper, which is very time consuming."