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Save the Dream, Keep the Home

The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America helps prevent foreclosures by bringing banks to the negotiating table with mortgage holders.

Greg Kaufmann and Ryan Carpenter

December 16, 2009

Recently, Bruce Marks, a former regulator who is the founder and CEO of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA)–a community advocacy and homeownership organization–testified to Congress about the ability of federal regulators to stop foreclosures by forcing banks to the negotiating table with homeowners.

Marks described the almost too-good-to-be-true success of NACA’s Save the Dream Tour, which he said has seen an average of 40,000-60,000 homeowners in each of eleven cities, and has modified about 80 percent of those homeowners’ mortgages. He argued that NACA shouldn’t even be needed, the government has far more leverage it could use with the banks if it simply wanted to.

When the Tour rolled into the Javits Center in New York City, I was there along with filmmaker Ryan Carpenter to check it out for The Nation.

Greg KaufmannTwitterGreg Kaufmann is a contributing writer for The Nation.


Ryan CarpenterRyan S. Carpenter is a New York-based independent filmmaker, writer, producer, director and editor. His narrative short, An Irish Wake, premiered at Big Apple Film Festival 2008 and was a runner-up for Reel 13 shorts.


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