For “Marco,” a co-op owner in his mid-50s in Manhattan, homeownership represents dignity, equality, and engagement with his community.

“The fact that I am a homeowner makes me feel that I am an equal member of society,” Marco said. “It makes me feel like my voice counts.”

Marco had always worked and supported himself, but over time his mental health challenges worsened, causing him to lose his job. After learning in 2013 that he is HIV-positive, he became eligible for assistance from New York City’s HIV/AIDS Administration (HASA), which began covering his mortgage and co-op maintenance fees. During this time, Marco was actively in therapy for his mental health struggles. In 2022, believing that he was ready to return to work and rebuild financial independence, Marco voluntarily closed his HASA case and re-entered the job market.

“I was actively trying to become financially self-reliant,” he said.

Although Marco was able to find employment, his mental health challenges resurfaced, leading to repeated job losses despite his best efforts. He found this to be demoralizing, as he genuinely believed that we was ready to return to work.

“These difficulties affect how I function in traditional work environments,” Marco said of his mental health challenges. “It is a form of disability, and it has cost me employment and, consequently, stability.”

While Marco continues to make active progress through therapy, he has not yet returned to the workforce. Therefore, he decided to reopen his HASA case. But this time, while most services were reinstated, his mortgage coverage was not.

“I was already approved for mortgage assistance under the exact same conditions in 2014,” he said. “Nothing about my housing structure, financial eligibility, or medical needs has changed. If anything, the urgency has increased due to my current health and recovery needs.”

This put Marco in a tough situation, as he feared the prospect of ending up in foreclosure and losing the home he worked so hard to keep.

In May 2024, Marco reached out to the City Bar Justice Center’s Homeowner Stability Project (HSP) for help. For the next few months, he received counsel on the non-judicial co-op foreclosure process and worked with HSP to prepare advocacy letters to the Human Resources Administration, requesting reinstatement of HASA’s payments towards the mortgage.

Amid fighting to save his home, Marco learned that he needed urgent open-heart surgery. While preparing for the operation, he received notice from his loan servicer that a foreclosure auction would be scheduled for two weeks following the procedure.

“At that point I kind of had given up,” Marco said, recognizing that both situations were beyond his control. “My priority was the heart operation because it was the most immediate and inevitable of the two, and I trusted that the housing issue was being handled by the expert hands of HSP.”

In the meantime, HSP executed a retainer agreement, HIPAA, and third-party authorization forms in order to advocate on Marco’s behalf with the loan servicer and HRA. The retainer also covered filing a lawsuit to stop an auction, if that became necessary.

During negotiations, HRA agreed to resume Marco’s mortgage payments going forward and to pay for all arrears accrued during the period when his eligibility was suspended. But one final obstacle emerged – the loan servicer was unable to provide an itemized breakdown of the mortgage arrears. HRA could not release the payment without this, and without that payment, the scheduled foreclosure auction could not be halted.

During this very brief window, a close friend of Marco’s stepped in and volunteered to provide the funds to bring the mortgage up to date. However, HSP was fully prepared to commence a lawsuit to postpone or cancel the auction with or without the outside financial support. HSP then coordinated the payment, confirmed the cancellation of the auction, and confirmed that HRA would resume future monthly payments.

“When the Homeowner Stability Project came along, I started to feel that maybe I wouldn’t lose my home,” Marco explained. “Maybe I would be able to recover in my own home after the operation.”

As Marco continues both his physical recovery from open-heart surgery and his ongoing mental health work, he is able to do so in the safety and stability of his own home. “I feel lucky to live in New York City and can rely on amazing organizations such as the City Bar Justice Center to fight the good fight and keep hope alive,” he said.

Want to learn more about the Homeowner Stability Project? Visit the project’s webpage.