I spend my Sunday mornings like most young men in their 20's: Doing New York Times Crossword puzzles, watching the Chris Matthews Show and then watching some collection of Meet the Press, and This Week. You know, the usual stuff.

Anyway, so I am watching the Chris Matthews Show and they are talking about the stimulus program, and all of a sudden, one of the bloviators on the show starts talking about how the real issue that needs to be tackled here- home foreclosures- is not really being addressed... except in Philadelphia. (Go to about 11:30 left in the video.) He then went on to give Mayor Mixmaster Mike props for our one of a kind foreclosure diversion program, which the Daily News has a story about this morning:

On any Thursday, City Hall Courtroom 676 looks and feels more like a swap meet than a court.

Under a high, ornate ceiling, painted in palatial gold and dark red, the huge, marble-walled room, illuminated by four brilliant chandeliers, is filled with the constant buzz of deal-making, demands, counterproposals and compromise.

A grandfather clock is stuck on 6:46, the only nonmoving object of the perpetual-motion machine that is Foreclosure Prevention Court. Except for the empty judge's bench, every usable square foot of space, including the jury box, is crammed with humanity - lenders' lawyers talking with borrowers' lawyers, housing counselors talking with both, a hundred or more homeowners in danger of losing their houses waiting silently to find out their fate, their eyes filled with equal parts fear and hope. Tears are not uncommon.

While predatory lending, exploding subprime mortgages, job loss, catastrophic injury and divorce continue to separate financially strapped homeowners from their houses at alarming rates, the court's volunteer army of 200 pro bono (free) lawyers and 40 pro tem (temporary) judges works with nonprofit housing counselors and the lenders' lawyers to keep Philadelphians in their homes.

Talking, partnering or an Obama/Lincoln "team of rivals" engaged in "right-sizing" mortgage loans - whatever you want to call it, it works.

For a number of different reasons, one of the things that Philly (by which I mean our government and our advocates) has done right for a long time now is working to stop predatory lending and mortgage foreclosures. From City Council passing the anti-predatory lending law back in 2001 (promptly killed in its infancy by Vince Fumo and Dwight Evans), to the Don't Borrow Trouble Hotline run by Philadelphia Legal Assistance and the former Predatory Lending Taskforce Meetings at the Office of Housing and Community Development, to what we have now: the foreclosure diversion program.

As the article notes, basically the program gets someone from the lender with the power to modify the loan (not an easy thing to do in the first place), puts them together with homeowners (represented by pro bono attorneys,), and in front of an arbiter they try and work out an affordable way to stay in their home.

To be clear, in the long run, it doesn't always work, and many people may still lose their homes even after all of this processing. That said, it is a profoundly different process than what happens in many places in the country. (In fact, in most other states, you don't even have to go to Court to foreclose on someone's home. You simply file something, and unless the homeowner affirmatively responds in Court, the home becomes property of the lender.) Together with the HEMAP program- a very well run Pennsylvania program that saves thousands of endangered homeowners a year- Philadelphia homeowners, hit by the scourge of predatory loans years before people wanted to listen to them- have a much better chance to stay in their homes than elsewhere in the nation. (Now, if the State could just get rid of their preemption of our law...)

There are many people involved in this who deserve a lot of credit: Advocates from PUP, PLA and CLS, the Pro Bono Attorneys, the Mayor's Office, etc. But, I doubt any of this would be happening if not for Judge Annette Rizzo. Judge Rizzo made a brave decision to temporarily halt Sheriff Sales a few years ago, and now has really shepherded this program into existence. There is a lot wrong with the way we (s)elect our judges, but with Judge Rizzo, we have someone who has done a heck of a lot of good for our City.

This is something we do right, and it is cool that it is getting both local and national attention.