At this time of year, many HUD offices emphasize marketing HUD's single-family programs and helping first-time homebuyers. But all year-round some current homeowners - often the elderly - face the threat of losing their homes because of unscrupulous predatory lenders. Earlier this year, a Maine HUD staffer sent out an "All Points Bulletin" looking for help to develop a State-of-Maine-specific predatory lending brochure. Michele Bernier with HUD's Buffalo Field Office received the alert and sent back two sample brochures that Buffalo HUD had developed: one aimed at seniors, the other at first-time homebuyers.

Diana Huot of HUD's Bangor Field Office took on the challenge. To meet the specific needs of HUD's customers in Maine, she combined the two brochures into one, added specific names and telephone numbers (including tty/tdd numbers) for Maine housing counseling agencies, contact information for the Maine Office of Consumer Credit Regulation - and replaced Buffalo's "predatory shark" with a couple of "predatory dinosaurs." Bangor HUD also received support from the Boston Regional Office, which printed the brochure in color. The transformed brochure, "Watch Out for the Predators," was an instant hit - especially with Home Buyer Education providers and Area Agencies on Aging - distributing more than 2,500 copies so far. While the attention grabber is the "Predator" headline, the brochure also has sound information on how every homebuyer can be a smart consumer. *

The Bangor Field Office includes the brochures in FHA information packets they send to prospective borrowers and also makes them available at Home Shows. Whether it's promoting first time homebuyers or saving existing homeowners from falling prey to predatory lenders, it all produces the same results - Americans achieving the Dream of Homeownership.

* Any HUD office can customize their own localized predatory lending/smart homebuying brochure using nothing more sophisticated than a word processing program. For a copy of the Bangor HUD brochure to use as a template, send an email to Diana_L._Huot@hud.gov or Jacqueline_M._Schultz@hud.gov. Use of predatory dinosaur images optional!