STATEMENT ON THE RESOLUTION FOR A HOUSING FORECLOSURECRISISIN SOLANO COUNTY

Last October 7

, 2008, marked a historic day in the City of Vallejo. History willrecord that on that day, the Vallejo City Council adopted a Resolution numbered 08-179: “DECLARING A HOUSING FORECLOSURE CRISIS IN VALLEJO, SUPPORTINGLOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL EFFORTS TO ADDRESS THE CRISIS AND URGINGLENDING INSTITUTIONS AND LOAN SERVICERS TO TAKE CERTAIN REMEDIALACTIONS.” This is the first legislative action on the housing foreclosure crisis doneby any city in the state of California and in the whole of the United States. Today likewise is a historic day for Solano county because we bring forth to thisaugust body, the county board of supervisors, the same resolution which bears thesignatures of more than six hundred fifty community and business leaders,homeowners and residents of this county. This Resolution is a result of the collaborative effort of Greenlining Institute, whosegeneral counsel Bob Gnaizda drafted the initial resolution and Mabuhay AllianceExecutive Director Faith Bautista, and local leaders e.g., Solano Community Collegeboard of Trustee Tony Ubalde, SCOE board member Rozzana Verder Aliga, myself,Vallejo School Board member Larry Asera, Priscilla and Francis Neri, MabuhayAlliance program coordinators/foreclosure counselors and many Filipino Americancommunity leaders.Greenlining Institute and Mabuhay Alliance were among those responsible for the$3.5B settlement made by Countrywide Bank of America to almost 400,000homeowners in the state of California. This resolution comes in an opportune time. From the data supplied by FirstAmerica, Vallejo ranks first in the number of foreclosures in the whole of SolanoCounty. For Solano county as a whole, there were 2730 foreclosure filings for thefirst seven months of 2008 or 13 times greater than 2006 when there were only215. For Vallejo, there were 1750 filings for the first seven months of 2008 which is40 times more than the number for the same period in 2006 when there were just32 filings. It is estimated by Greenlining that for the whole year of 2008, Solanocounty will have a total of 4800 foreclosure filings with Vallejo will have anestimated 2200 or 45% of the total filings. The increasing number of foreclosures in Solano county has had a devastatingimpact not only on families who have lost their homes but also on entireneighborhoods as well as diminished property mortgage lenders/servicers will bepresent to do loss mitigation work on home mortgages and help keep our peoplevalues and revenues for the County.