Philadelphia’s Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Pilot Program — which forces lenders and defaulted homeowners to sit at a city-mediated table before forcing people’s homes into a Sheriff’s Sale — has gotten some good press before, but with this page A1 story in today’s New York Times, it has hit the good-news motherlode. (We’re taking bets now on how many network news shows the story will now bleed over into tonight.) The Times piece does a few things really well: It explains in very basic terms how the program works (something we’ve not seen a ton of), talks about how it really has helped people and how other cities are looking at it as a model, and finally (but importantly), points out that the program isn’t perfect, but is still better than just about anything anyone else is doing right now to stop a flood of foreclosures. It also commendably spreads the credit around to City Council (holy shit, they did something!), Sheriff John D. Green and Judge Annette M. Rizzo. It’s important to know that; we’ve spent a lot of time lately pondering the failures and successes of the Nutter Adminstration thus far and the fact is, the foreclosure program happened on Nutter’s watch, and with his direct involvment, too. That’s gonna have to count for something in a year or two.

So there you have it: The world is not totally made of shit. Have you got some good news? If so, send it to tips[at]philebrity[dot]com with “GOOD MOTHERFUCKING NEWS!” in the subject header — we’d love to hear about it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 1:14 pm.