CHANGER is a homeowner advocacy organization that assists homeowners in building intergenerational wealth through homeownership.
CHANGER works with homeowners to end abusive mortgage lending practices in low and moderate income communities in New York City through the use of consumer advocacy and education, financial and legal research, community organizing, public policy advocacy, and providing direct services.

Madeline Holder was working at the Central Brooklyn Partnership. She created the Sisters Lending Circle. Due to a request for assistance by family member with foreclosure issues, Madeline quickly learned the obstacles faced by homeowners. Mrs. Holder found the unwillingness of financial institutions to assist homeowners in foreclosure, the very limited resources available to homeowners in foreclosure and virtually no governmental protections for homeowners. In addition, Madeline discovered that everyone was speaking for homeowners and homeowners had no voice. Madeline decided to make a change.

CHANGER was founded by Madeline Holder in the fall of 2004. She was awarded an Open Society Institute NYC Community Fellowship to work with a group of low-income homeowners in NYC, specifically to develop a homeowner advocacy organization. In the first two years of the organization’s existence, CHANGER successfully engaged primarily in public policy advocacy and community education efforts in partnership with low-income, low wealth, minority homeowners and other advocacy organizations throughout New York City.

Lionel Ouellette (our Executive Director) and Rick Echevarria (our Director of Operations) were hired by CHANGER in early 2007. Madeleine joined the CHANGER Board. CHANGER began disseminating information to the hardest hit communities in NYC. Whether it was government sponsored events, community events, community board meeting or block parties, CHANGER was there providing education about the foreclosure process, mortgage rescue scams, the financial institutions strategic approach in targeting these communities of color and the importance of homeowners organizing and leveraging their life experiences towards sustainable homeownership.

In New York City, efforts by the ‘predatory lending complex’ to encourage consumers to borrow improvidently were targeted at and primarily concentrated within vulnerable communities.  Thousands of subprime loans were issued in working-class communities of color (with relatively large percentages of immigrants, municipal government employees, and families in poverty) across New York City, and the fallout as a result has been devastating. These are the same communities that were victims of redlining.

CHANGER, Inc. exists to alter the relationships that financial institutions have historically had with working-class communities of color across New York City. Since the past era of bank ‘redlining’ to the present predatory lending era, clear patterns of pervasive and continuing lending discrimination has been the foundation of this relationship. By either denying credit (mortgage loans) to residents of minority communities or flooding these communities with unaffordable loan products (subprime mortgages), financial institutions have ensured that working class people of color remain on the margins of the mortgage lending system in New York City. However, the financial institutions have been successful in engaging in these practices only because they have existed as part of a ‘predatory lending complex’ that includes real estate and mortgage brokers, national, local, and independent mortgage lenders, investment firms, insurance companies and in complicity government regulators, policymakers, and media outlets who provide easily purchasable advertising space (newspapers, radio & television stations).  All of these combine to create a reality where predatory lending, and all of the unscrupulous activities it gives rise to (deed theft, mortgage fraud, identify theft, loan modification scams, etc.) are the normal atmosphere for conducting mortgage lending, foreclosure prevention, and homeownership promotion. The tactics are seen as commonplace and normal because they are everywhere seen or heard on radio, television, sign postings, mailings, and email. However, the foreclosure epidemic that now plagues areas like Southeast Queens and East Brooklyn is the clear evidence that while credit has been extended to these communities, it has not been extended on equal terms. Any democratization of credit has to be earned by homeowners and communities who struggle against predatory lending in all its forms to overcome the crises that they are facing.

CHANGER works as a citywide organization but the majority of our work is presently being conducted in Queens’ communities, South Jamaica, Cambria Heights, Rosedale, St. Albans and Ozone Park and in Brooklyn communities, East New York, Canarsie, Flatbush and East Flatbush. These are all predominately African-American, Latino, and Caribbean-American communities with large percentages of immigrant families and working-class households. CHANGER has two programs that assist homeowners. COPE (Counseling and Outreach Program for Education and Empowerment) and Do Something.

COPE is our direct service component of CHANGER. We operate two pro-se assistance foreclosure defense legal clinics, one in Brooklyn and one in Queens. We provide mortgage counseling and educational workshops that allow homeowners to understand the foreclosure process and the options available to them to overcome their situation.

Do Something is our policy, advocacy and organizing component of CHANGER.