Southwest Solutions in southwest Detroit: Southwest Housing Solutions: Housing Opportunity Center

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Southwest Housing Solutions

Housing Opportunity Center (HOC)

Southwest Housing Solutions’ Housing Opportunity Center (HOC) began in 2004. Its mission is to promote and preserve homeownership and advance financial literacy in the community. HOC’s professional, bilingual and HUD-certified counselors provide financial fitness and credit counseling, homebuyer education, home repair loans and foreclosure prevention counseling. We can help you make good economic choices, avoid harmful debt and predatory lenders, gain wealth and the dream of homeownership, access income supports, and develop educational and employment opportunities. Our services are free for eligible individuals and families.

Services:

Foreclosure Intervention Counseling. Our professional, bilingual and HUD-certified counselors are experts on the loan products and relief programs available to homeowners. We work with you and lenders to renegotiate mortgages into more manageable rates, fees and terms.
To help you buy and keep your home:
- Pre-Purchase Personalized Counseling: One-on-one counseling program for first-time homebuyers that covers many topics.
- Homebuyer Education: Free, comprehensive course that explains every step a first-time homebuyer must take. Participants learn in classroom sessions and individual meetings with counselors.
- eHome America Online Homebuyer Education Course: Low-cost online course enables you to obtain an official Certificate of Homebuyer Education at your own convenience. (See a 30-second ad for this eHome program.)
- Mortgage Loan Pre-Approval: Helps you get pre-approval for your mortgage loan after you complete our homeownership orientation and classes.
- Post-purchase Education: Helps families make the most of homeownership and build equity. The program also advises familes about how to keep their homes when facing a crisis.
- Financial Fitness Training workshops.
- Loan Modification Scam Alert: A national public education campaign to help homeowners protect themselves against loan modification scams, find trusted foreclosure counseling and report fraudulent schemes to authorities.
Center for Working Families. We provide expert advice to help low-income families reach financial stability, access income supports, develop educational and employment opportunities, build wealth, and move up the economic ladder.
Detroit GreenWorks Solutions. This program provides disadvantaged residents of Detroit employment training and opportunities in the rapidly growing “green industries” sector, such as weatherization, agriculture and forestry.
Homeless Veterans' Reintegration Program (HVRP). This program helps homeless veterans find meaningful employment so that they can be productive members of the community.
Adult Learning Lab. Located across from Clark Park in southwest Detroit, the Lab helps adults improve their literacy, math and computer skills so they can be better qualified for employment.
Earn and Learn. This program is an innovative and comprehensive model of workforce development that will help more than a thousand chronically jobless individuals in the Detroit area gain long-term employment.
eHome Money.This online Financial Training course can help you improve your economic situation, build or rebuild your credit, increase your financial wealth, and manage your money better. For a one-time fee of $50, you can complete the online course at your own convenience.
ProsperUS Detroit. This program provides entrepreneurial-training and micro-lending for Detroit residents, particularly those who are African-American, Arab-American or Latino. ProsperUS aims to help establish at least 70 new minority-owned businesses in the city.

The Housing Opportunity Center is located at 3627 Vernor Highway, Detroit, MI 48216. To learn more about the services we provide, call us at 313.841.9641 or email us.

Results

• Provided foreclosure intervention counseling to 864 families in 2012 and kept 569 in their homes; the 66% success rate far exceeds national average
• The Skillman Foundation calls our services “by far, the best and most effective foreclosure prevention program”
• Provided first-time home-buyer counseling to 160 families in 2012; 55 bought homes
• Counseled 1450 families in last five years to prepare them for home purchase, of whom 280 bought homes
• Center for Working Families (CWF) enrolled more than 600 clients in 2012; 542 clients (90% all CWF clients) received at least two CWF services
• Our CWF site is a national model in achieving successful outcomes
• 126 individuals completed vocational training in 2012
• 185 individuals were placed into employment in 2012
• 289 individuals received financial counseling: 119 improved their net worth (41%); 81 improved their credit scores
• Adult Learning Lab served 389 persons: 221 participated in GED; 168 in ESL; 10 gained employment
• Homeless Veterans' Reintegration Program (HVRP) served 126 veterans and placed 62 in jobs in 2012
• Earn and Learn enrolled 695 participants and trained 572 in work readiness; 372 were placed into subsidized employment and 161 progressed to unsubsidized employment

The mission of the HOC is to build wealth in the community by promoting homeownership and enhancing financial literacy. Our mission is supported by many important partnerships. Southwest Solutions is Detroit’s only chartered member of NeighborWorks® America. Southwest Housing Solutions is Michigan’s only housing counseling affiliate of the National Council of La Raza. NCLR strives to increase Hispanic homeownership and supports community organizations that serve Hispanics.