On February 18, the day that President Obama announced his landmark Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, community development leaders were gathered in Atlanta for a NeighborWorks Symposium on Preparing Organizations to Lead in the New Era of Homeownership.

President Obama’s plan to curb foreclosures and stabilize communities was timely and welcome to participants, who watched it live. They had just wrapped up a provocative roundtable discussion on the challenges and opportunities facing community development organizations during this volatile time in housing. For many, the preventative measures in the president’s plan aligned well with the roundtable discussion, which settled on a need to preempt future waves of foreclosure, mainly through more aggressive counseling efforts.

Craig Nickerson	Meg Burns	Cynthia Flaherty	Glenda Gabriel	Donna Sheline	Kevin Smith
Panelists on Roundtable discussion, "What Organizations Need to be Considering NOW!"

The discussion, "What Organizations Need to be Considering NOW!" was led by Craig Nickerson, director of the National Community Stabilization Trust and a panel representing industries key to the nation’s foreclosure prevention efforts: Cynthia Flaherty, homeownership director for Ohio Housing Finance Agency; Glenda Gabriel, neighborhood lending executive for Bank of America; Donna Sheline, director, homeownership preservation office for JPMorgan Chase; Kevin Smith, president and CEO of Community Ventures Corporation; and Meg Burns, director of FHA Single Family Program Development at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

One key theme emerging from the round table discussion was the critical role that counseling will play in the years ahead. Participants noted that foreclosure prevention counseling has been promoted as a major strategy to mitigate effects of the foreclosure crisis. But pre-purchase counseling and education has not yet been embraced as a national priority to help prevent another housing meltdown, panelists said. Moving forward, it is incumbent upon the industry to get out of crisis mode and back to the basics of promoting homeownership counseling as critical to sustainable homeownership.

Making counseling an industry-wide accepted, if not required, part of the homebuying process might be daunting. There are many challenges and considerations:

• Building counselor capacity – practitioners need to increase their knowledge and skills about mortgage financing, and the industry needs to boost its own resources to increase the number and reach of counselors.
• Unifying the industry – not only around a set of counseling standards, but also around a message on the value of counseling to both homebuyer and lender. All stakeholders (including homeowners, real estate agents, lenders, CDOs, GSEs and servicers) must be on board to prevent those who insist on counseling from losing their market share to others who do not.
• Changing the perception of counseling – Too often, homeownership counseling is seen as a process to go through when "something's wrong." One of the greatest opportunities for CDOs is to redefine homeownership counseling as a step all potential homebuyers should take before committing to a home. 
• Adopting new models of homebuyer education – The industry must develop more flexible and creative approaches to homebuyer education, models that do not slow down the homebuying process or sacrifice quality.
• Instilling confidence in homebuyers and lending institutions - as a result of the market, lenders are more tentative, counselors are stressed and many potential buyers are wondering if homeownership is worth it. Panelists said there must be a cultural shift that values homeownership again as vital to strong and stable communities, rather than simply as a way to build wealth.

In addition to the roundtable discussion, the symposium included concurrent breakout sessions on critical issues that reflect the changing housing market. They included: Exploring Lease-Purchase as a Community Stabilization Strategy; New Approaches to Financing and Credit Scoring; Maximizing Technology to improve Service Delivery; and Counseling Challenges and Successes. NeighborWorks America will post highlights from these sessions, as well as Power Point presentations from keynote speakers at www.nw.org/homeownershipsymposium.