Established in January 2014, the 16th Judicial Circuit Kane County Mandatory Residential Foreclosure Mediation Program served 366 homeowners in its first year. The program, administered by Chicago-based Resolution Systems Institute through funding from the Illinois Office of the Attorney General and support from the Kane County Board, is based in the Geneva courthouse, located at 100 S. Third St. It was established to assist homeowners struggling to navigate the court system with a fair and efficient process for resolving what happens to their homes.

Among other goals, the 16th Judicial Circuit and RSI sought to help relieve the burden of a court that had seen its foreclosure call grow from two to five days per week.

A recently completed evaluation of the Kane County program, along with the five other programs created under the Attorney General’s funding, found that the mediation programs were meeting this goal. Mediation accomplishes this by first helping homeowners submit their loan workout packet to the lender. Then mediation provides a process that helps homeowners and lenders communicate, concluding with an opportunity for homeowners to decide what they will do.

Kane County homeowners were additionally given access to legal and financial counseling. Law students at Northern Illinois University along with local legal aid groups staff a help desk at the courthouse and represent homeowners in mediation. Housing counseling agencies, including Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Northern Illinois, Joseph Corporation and Neighborhood Housing Services of the Fox Valley help homeowners decipher the paperwork required to apply for a modified loan that they can afford.

Where homeowners retained their properties through a loan modification, more than 90 percent converted their temporary modifications into permanent ones by successfully completing a three-month trial period.

An addition to the 71 homeowners who have been able to avoid foreclosure, 16 people worked out agreements to voluntarily relinquish their homes and pursue other options. Nearly all participants who completed the program reported satisfaction with the process, remarking that it provided “complete understanding and fairness,” and as compared to litigation was a “better forum to discuss options back and forth.”

As the program moves forward, it will seek to build upon a strong first year in which it successfully served more homeowners than any of the other Attorney General-funded foreclosure mediation programs. One area where the program hopes to improve is increasing the percentage of homeowners who complete the process.

With less than half of homeowners completing the program, the 16th Judicial Circuit Program will examine methods to facilitate continued participation throughout the process in the hopes of providing even more homeowners the fairest possible system for resolving their mortgage foreclosure disputes.

Homeowners interested in learning more about or entering the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit Kane County Mandatory Residential Foreclosure Mediation Program should reach out to Program Coordinator Kevin Malone, at (630)444-3128 or kmalone@aboutrsi.org.

• Click here to see the complete evaluation results for the 16th Circuit.
• Click here to see Six Programs, Six Models study evaluating the six programs created through the Office of the Illinois Attorney General.
• Click here for an Executive Summary of the Six Programs, Six Models.

Background on Grant

In May of 2013, the Office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa M. Madigan awarded multi-year grants totaling $5 million to three Illinois non-profits to foster foreclosure mediation. In the northern region of the state, Resolution Systems Institute worked with courts in Kane County (16th Judicial Circuit), Lake County (19th Judicial Circuit), and Winnebago and Boone counties (17th Judicial Circuit) to develop the three programs that RSI now administers.

RSI designed and implemented the statewide cloud-based case management, monitoring and evaluation system, which made this evaluation possible. RSI also is responsible for training mediators for all the programs in the state and is working with Northern Illinois University School of Law, which has established a legal clinic under the grant to assist homeowners facing foreclosure. Dispute Resolution Institute, a Carbondale-based mediation nonprofit, is administering payments for all the mediators mediating for the grant- funded programs.