The Hope Now Alliance is a cooperative effort between the US government, counselors, investors, and lenders to help homeowners who may not be able to pay their mortgages.
Created in 2007[1] in response to the subprime mortgage crisis, the alliance claims to have helped over 1 million homeowners avoid foreclosure through January 2008.
[3] On August 31, 2007 President George W. Bush asked Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to work with mortgage lenders, foreclosure counsellors, the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to launch a new "foreclosure avoidance initiative".
[11] Since first being mentioned in December 2007, the Homeowner's HOPE Hotline received more than 140,000 calls in 2007 (including over 45,000 in the first three days), and an average of 3,200 calls per day in January 2008[12] There are claims that the group has not been effective at addressing the increasing problem of foreclosures in the United States, with recent figures indicating that the rate of foreclosures rising faster than the increase in homeowners helped.
[15] Concerns about the limitations of data collected by groups such as Hope Now led the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to undertake its own investigation into foreclosures.