Roundtable focuses on Nassau foreclosure solutions

With the number of newly launched foreclosures on Long Island rising, bankers and county and state housing officials gathered in Mineola on Friday to find ways of solidifying government-private partnerships to keep people in their homes.

Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano told what was billed as a "foreclosure roundtable" at the County Executive Building that government was partly to blame for the housing crisis, but that all sides must now focus on a broad recovery.

"I'm sensitive to trying to help fix what happened in Nassau County," Mangano told about 100 people assembled for the roundtable.

In an interview later, Mangano called the foreclosure situation on the Island "serious, extremely serious."

Earlier this month, Realty-

Trac, an online market for foreclosures, reported that in April - the latest month for which such statistics are available - lenders began the legal process of repossessing 1,280 homes on Long Island, a 3.5 percent increase from a year ago, and a 10 percent increase over March.

Panelists included representatives from several banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.

There are no immediate solutions, said Frank A. White, chief executive of the Zion Community Development Corp. of Freeport, an advocacy and educational organization that helped organize the event.

But, White said, the benefit of the roundtable was that it "brought together the public and the private sector" to discuss the mounting foreclosure problem. The roundtable also underscored the fact that foreclosures are not just a problem in poor or minority neighborhoods, he said.

"It's happening all over Long Island," White noted.