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Florida foreclosure force

Catherine Deshayes

A newly created task force in Florida is pushing the idea of using  mediation and other management techniques in order to bring the threat of foreclosures and the sheer number of people losing their homes in the troubled state under control...

The 15 members of the  ‘Task Force on Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Cases' feel that federal measures introduced by the US Government are not proving very effective, so they want to do something further to help solve the issue.

The force is promoting the use of these mediation style techniques to help achieve settlement at the beginning of a case rather than late on, which ideally will help borrowers to save their homes.

The managed mediation scheme the force will be running will be free of charge to borrowers and would place all foreclosure cases on residential properties into mediation unless the plaintiff and borrower agree otherwise.

The task force stipulated that under its plan, vacant and abandoned properties will be exempt from the mediation requirement and expedited through the foreclosure process.

Other foreclosure cases on non-borrower-occupied or tenant-occupied properties where mediation would involve several parties will be looked at one by one.

A report issued by the force, which likened the pileup of foreclosures in Florida to a traffic filled motorway, said, "The Task Force has looked for ways to create off-ramps to get traffic off the road in the form of managed mediation to resolve cases at the beginning instead of at the end.

"The traffic left on the road must be coordinated to keep it moving safely and as swiftly as possible through the use of the limited case management resources available to a judicial system where every spare staff slot has already been cut."

Picture by Joe Shlabotnik