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Bronx homeowners facing foreclosure are in the market for assistance
By
Willow Higgins
Published Oct 9, 2026
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Willow Higgins/Gothamist
By
Willow Higgins
Published Oct 9, 2026
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Kimberly Fenelon and her daughter were making snowmen in the front yard of her home in Hunts Point, the Bronx, when she was approached by a woman who handed her a stack of papers.
She had been served.
It was the day after Christmas, and a winter storm was dusting the New York City area with pristine white powder. As Fenelon realized what was happening, she burst into tears. Then so did her daughter, who was 6 at the time.
Fenelon, a single mother in her early 30s, had fallen behind on her mortgage. The home was once her mother’s, who died two years prior from cancer, leaving Fenelon to pay off the remaining balance.
The house was facing foreclosure.
“I was stunned,” Fenelon said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Fenelon is one of more than 1,000 Bronx residents who were issued a foreclosure filing in 2025, according to an accounting from the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, an organization that supports local homeowners.
Foreclosure filings skyrocketed last year, according to a report from the real estate company Property Shark. The borough recorded 109 first-time foreclosures in the second quarter of this year, the highest in seven years, while foreclosures across the city declined.
Now, New York City, state, and local organizations are ramping up efforts to help people like Fenelon who have fallen behind on their mortgages, and are encouraging people to seek help before it reaches the point of foreclosure.
“ If you hit some sort of unforeseen bump or problem, there's help available,” said Christie Peale, the CEO of the Center for New York City Neighborhoods. “A lot of folks just don't know that.”
“ The earlier that you reach out for help, the easier it is for us to help you,” Peale added.
Community outreach efforts to get Peale’s message across are in full swing.
Last weekend, the New York attorney general’s office hosted a block-walking event through the North Bronx, where foreclosures are particularly concentrated.
Volunteers knocked on more than 1,100 doors to disseminate information about resources designed to help Bronx residents struggling with homeownership and to warn people about scams, like deed theft, another threat to homeownership in the borough.
“For many New Yorkers, home ownership represents a pinnacle of their success, of their career,” Attorney General Letitia James told a crowd of volunteers gearing up to knock on doors. The best way to protect homeowners, she added, is to equip them with resources.
“There cannot be prevention without education,” James said.
The event was followed by three separate clinics that offered free legal counsel for Bronx homeowners concerned about foreclosure. That includes the two standing clinics at the Bronx County civil courthouse, and a resource fair at Bronx House, a community center in Pelham Parkway, hosted by the Center for NYC Neighborhoods and the AG’s office. There, about 125 people sought assistance from city agencies and nonprofit organizations.
An affordability crisis
Peale said the efforts are responding to a more systemic challenge: the affordability crisis.
“ If your cost of living is increasing, if your property taxes are going up, if your income hasn't kept up with your cost of living, it's gonna be challenging,” Peale said. “ All of these things are putting pressure on people’s pocketbooks. And that can impact your ability to pay your mortgage on time.”
Other measures wait in the wings. Last month, Deputy City Council Speaker Nantasha Williams advanced a package of bills aimed at strengthening homeowner protections.
“Together, these efforts reflect a broader approach to protecting homeownership: strengthening our laws, investing in the services homeowners rely on, and making those resources easier to access,” Williams said in a statement.
The package of 10 bills includes an array of approaches to the issues homeowners face. One bill would require individuals to be enrolled in city-created property tax payment plans to help avoid missed payments.
Another would require financial literacy advisers to serve at older adult centers — housing counselors observe that many foreclosures come from a lack of estate planning.
A third bill would establish a public outreach and education program to inform struggling homeowners of the assistance available to them.
Joseph Rebella is a supervising attorney of the Homeownership Protection Project at the Legal Aid Society in the Bronx. He helps run the weekly housing clinics at the Bronx County civil courthouse.
Not all of the bills help protect people from losing their homes, Rebella said.
Some, Rebella said, are “aimed at sort of discrete issues which are problems but that don't necessarily contribute to the volume of foreclosure or housing turnover.”
Nonetheless, he said, most seem like good ideas.
“ A lot of those bills involve connecting people to the services that already exist,” Rebella said. “There’s nothing negative to be said about that.”
Another proposal would add more than $500,000 to the Homeowner Stabilization Services Initiative, a newly established fund that supports organizations that provide legal and financial assistance to homeowners or those looking to buy. If passed, it would bring the budget for the program to about $5.69 million for the 2027 fiscal year.
Gladstone Johnson, the executive director of the Bronx Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit organization that includes a foreclosure prevention program, said that increased funding would be “the major fix for us.”
“ We're not asking [the homeowners] for any money,” Johnson said. “We need more funding so that we can hire some more staff and reach out to more of these homeowners.”
The need for Johnson’s services has skyrocketed in recent years, he said. The Center for New York City Neighborhoods refers people to his organization for housing counseling.
In a typical year, Johnson said, he would usually receive 15 referrals to their foreclosure program. This year, the Center referred 60 people to him — more than four times the usual caseload — before the year even comes to a close.
Big bills, big worries
The homeowner legal assistance clinics at the courthouse in the Bronx is a similar scene. The clinic is run out of a brightly lit room down a hallway with wood paneling, where yellow signs and arrows point toward the legal clinic.
Attorneys from the Legal Aid Society, New York Legal Assistance Group, and Legal Services NYC all help run the programming every Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Anthony James came to the clinic this week for legal counsel after he said he received a letter in the mail about falling behind on his mounting debt. James was sitting on top of an $80,000 bill from Con Edison — he shared the invoice with Gothamist — on top of another nearly $80,000 still left on the mortgage of his four-dwelling house, which is worth over $1 million.
James told the attorney on duty, Martha de Jesus, the director of Neighborhood Stabilization Project at Bronx Legal Services, that there is no way he could make the $7,000 mortgage payments he owes the bank.
De Jesus asked detailed questions about his income, his expenses, and the tenants who are living in his dwellings. She pulled up his property records, having to hotspot herself on an iPad after giving up on the Wi-Fi in her office — “we’re not made of money here,” she said.
She gave James strict instructions to return next week with additional materials, including bank statements. She would help make him a budget and game plan that could help him save his home.
De Jesus said James’ case can be a success story — he is one of the few who came in before he was issued a mandatory court hearing. And while James’ debt is mounting, de Jesus explained that he still has more than $200,000 in equity on his home.
The challenge now, she said, will be to find a way for him to be able to afford his costly monthly payments. But, she said, “we have time to figure it out.”
As for Fenelon, she said her experience fighting for her home has been “incredibly humbling.”
But, after applying seven different times for the city’s “One Shot Deal,” the city’s emergency cash assistance program, she has finally been accepted, and her application is pending final approval.
Fenelon said the deal will hopefully provide her with a grant to pay off the remaining balance — she said $9,000 — on her home, and this nightmare will finally be over.
Now, she said she notices people all over the Bronx facing foreclosure.
“I don’t know if prices are going up, but [foreclosure] is everywhere,” Fenelon said.
Thankfully, she said, “I have the opportunity to keep my home. Some people just don’t have it.”
Tagged
Race And Justice Unit
bronx
economy
housing
Willow Higgins
Willow Higgins covers changes in New York City neighborhoods for WNYC and Gothamist. She has previously reported on wrongful convictions, corruption in district attorney offices and Texas' child welfare system.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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