Can't refinance? Call your congressman

updated 4:09 p.m. ET June 5, 2009

WASHINGTON - Can’t afford your mortgage payment? If the bank won’t take your call, your member of Congress just might.

Several lawmakers whose districts are drowning in foreclosures are taking unprecedented steps to help people stay in their homes, including picking up the phone themselves to negotiate with banks on behalf of their constituents.

The pain of being put on hold for an eternity can be an educating experience for a member of Congress.

As a body, Congress has failed to come up with a broad fix for the foreclosure crisis. So some lawmakers are helping homeowners one at a time and seeking creative ways to make a difference in their districts.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat whose Baltimore district has been walloped by unemployment, arranged for 19 banks to set up shop at Morgan State University on Saturday to work with homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages.

Cummings is asking people to come to his anti-foreclosure fair with recent pay stubs, tax returns, their monthly budget and any late notices or foreclosure threats they’ve received by their banks. He predicted 500 people would show up, a turnout he hopes will help convince the White House that federal money is needed to bailout homeowners directly.

“We may very well be reaching the point of a tsunami of foreclosures,” he said.

While Maryland has been hit hard, with more than 390 foreclosure fillings in Baltimore alone in April, California is in the worst shape. Some 342,000 U.S. properties fell into foreclosure in April with 96,500 of those filings — more than one in four — in California, according to RealtyTrac, a Web-based company that compiles data for most U.S. counties.

Rep. Maxine Waters, who represents Los Angeles, has called mortgage lenders directly to seek lower payments for her constituents.

Waters said it’s frustrating. She’s spent more than an hour on hold before, listening to music and getting transferred to different departments.

She said the process can be worse for homeowners who are only slightly behind in their mortgage payments. A grossly delinquent homeowner might get a specialist on the line who can modify the loan, Waters said. But other cases are handled by someone who merely threatens homeowners to pay up.

In at least two cases, the congresswoman said, she wasn’t able to resolve the situation until she appealed directly to the chief executive officers of Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Both banks responded favorably, with Wells Fargo even sending Waters a long letter of apology.

“Trying to contact the servicers is an absolute nightmare for anyone,” even a member of Congress, she said.

While liberal Democrats like Cummings and Waters want to force banks to absorb losses and keep more people in their homes, other lawmakers see that as a recipe for disaster. Many banks already are on shaky footing because of the mortgage crisis. Forcing the industry to take even bigger hits could further clog credit lines or drive up interest rates for other customers.

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