Southwest Housing Solutions’ Housing Opportunity Center (HOC) began in 2004. Its mission is to promote and preserve homeownership and advance financial literacy in the community. HOC’s professional, bilingual and HUD-certified counselors provide financial fitness and credit counseling, homebuyer education, home repair loans and foreclosure prevention counseling. We can help you make good economic choices, avoid harmful debt and predatory lenders, gain wealth and the dream of homeownership, access income supports, and develop educational and employment opportunities. Our services are free for eligible individuals and families.

  Services:

• Foreclosure Intervention Counseling.  Our professional, bilingual and HUD-certified counselors are experts on the loan products and relief programs available to homeowners. We work with you and lenders to renegotiate mortgages into more manageable rates, fees and terms.
  
• To help you buy and keep your home:
  
  • Pre-Purchase Personalized Counseling: One-on-one counseling program for first-time homebuyers that covers many topics.
  • Homebuyer Education: Free, comprehensive course that explains every step a first-time homebuyer must take. Participants learn in classroom sessions and individual meetings with counselors.
  • eHome America Online Homebuyer Education Course: Low-cost online course enables you to obtain an official Certificate of Homebuyer Education at your own convenience.
  • Mortgage Loan Pre-Approval: Helps you get pre-approval for your mortgage loan after you complete our homeownership orientation and classes.
    
  • Post-purchase Education: Helps families make the most of homeownership and build equity. The program also advises familes about how to keep their homes when facing a crisis.
  • Financial Fitness Training workshops.
• Center for Working Families. We provide expert advice to help low-income families reach financial stability, access income supports, develop educational and employment opportunities, build wealth, and move up the economic ladder.
• Detroit GreenWorks Solutions. This program provides disadvantaged residents of southwest Detroit employment training and opportunities in the rapidly growing “green industries” sector, such as weatherization, agriculture and forestry.

The Housing Opportunity Center is located at 3627 Vernor Highway, Detroit, MI 48219. To learn more about the services we provide, call us at 313.841.9641 or email us.

• Provided foreclosure prevention counseling to 1497 families in 2009; averted 463 foreclosures
• The Skillman Foundation calls our services “by far, the best and most effective foreclosure prevention program”
• Selected by Freddie Mac to participate in an intensive outreach effort to help distressed borrowers in 38 states save their homes
• Counseled more than 700 families in last two years to prepare them for home purchase
• Of the more than 300 homebuyer education graduates, 85 bought homes
• Helped 11 families repair homes with loans and grants in 2009
• Two-thirds of clients earn less than 50% of Area Median Income
• Center for Working Families enrolled 426 cleints in 2009 who receive at least one service; helped 12 clients gain employment
• Our CWF is considered a national model in achieving successful outcomes
• Lead agency of a consortium of nonprofits that secured $4 million "Pathways Out of Poverty" grant to train disadvantaged community residents for green jobs

 
  Latest News

• First GreenWorks weatherization class graduates
• Greening of Detroit first GreenWorks graduating class
• Helping unemployed find work: Center for Working Families
  
• HOC teams with Freddie Mac to help distressed borrowers in 38 states

See all Housing Opportunity Center news >>