Keep Your Home California is the State's $2 billion, federally funded effort to help California families struggling to pay their mortgages through programs designed specifically for low or moderate income homeowners experiencing financial hardship. Keep Your Home California is administered by the California Housing Finance Agency.

There are four programs that make up Keep Your Home California, all of which have been developed to address different aspects of the current housing crisis and help homeowners facing financial hardships. The four programs are the Unemployment Mortgage Assistance Program, the Reinstatement Assistance Program, the Principal Reduction Program, and the Transition Assistance Program. Nearly 8,000 homeowners have benefited or are in process to receive funds from the state-run program, which was fully implemented in February of 2011. The primary changes that have been made to the program are:

• Removing the "cash-out restriction from all four keep Your Home California programs. Homeowners were previously not eligible for the Principal Reduction Program if they had consummated a cash-out refinance on their home. This exclusion has now been eliminated under all four programs.
• Allowing homeowners who own additional properties to qualify for Keep Your Home California. Under the new policy, homeowners can own additional properties, which will help address situations where homeowners were additional signers on a home for a relative.
• Increasing mortgage assistance for unemployed homeowners from six months to nine months. Out-of-work homeowners will now be able to receive as much as #3,000 per month for up to nine months to cover mortgage, tax, and insurance payments through the Unemployment Mortgage Assistance Program. Homeowners must be receiving benefits from the Claifornia Employment Development Department to be elligible.
• Increasing maximum funding from $15,000 to $20,000 to reinstate past due mortgage loans. The Mortgage Reinstatement Assistance Program allows homeowners who have faced a financial hardship to reinstate their past-due mortgage loans, basically catching up on their loand payments.

Keep Your Home California also offers a Principal Reduction Program that will lower the amount owed on mortgages by as much as $50,000 in an effort to achieve affordable monthly payments for the homeowner. The Principal Reduction Program requires the mortgage services to match the amount on a dollar-per-dollar basis, so the maximum benefit to a homeowner could be a $100,000 reduction in principal.

The Transitition Assistance Program provides as much as $5,000 in relocation costs for homeowners who have decided to transition out of homeownership through a mortgage servicer-approved short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.

In order for homeowners to qualify for any of the four Keep Your Home California programs, their mortgage services must be participating. Almost 50 mortgage services now participate in the program; these servicers cover more than 85 percent of the mortgages in California. For a list of servicers and the programs they participate in, visit their website with participant info.

Homeowners seeking information about the program are encouraged to call 888.954.KEEP(5337) between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays, or visit their general website ortheir Spanish site.

Previously ineligible homeowners are encouraged to contact Your Home California and see if they now qualify.

See also other local services & organizations.