Watching three of her kids ages 4 and under, Rebecca Gibson has her hands full. But an even bigger load was piled on over the past year when she and husband Robert almost lost their Belvidere home in what sounds like a perfect neighborhood. "It's a neighborhood where you can go borrow sugar from a neighbor from and the kids have a lot of friends," Gibson said. But after her husband had a semi accident on the job last fall, the family of six struggled to stay in the race on their mortgage payments. "We were scared. We had four kids and they're all little and we didn't know where we were going to put them," Gibson said. Just this week, the Gibsons caught a lucky break. They received a loan modification to keep their home. But other Stateline families haven't been so lucky. In Winnebago County, including Rockford, there were 501 foreclosures in 2006, a slight decline in last year and 179 so far this year. "Even as the numbers go down, our caseload is going up because more people are actually getting help," said Bob Campbell.
Campbell, with the Rockford Area Affordable Housing Coalition, says the two main factors locally leading to foreclosure are freak accidents like the Gibson family's experience or losing a job. The first piece of advice is universal. "Sit down and look at the finances. How much money's going in, going out, what are the absolute essentials, what can they cut," Campbell said. Then there's alternatives like loan modifications...alternatives that have saved at least one local family's American dream. We also checked in with Stepehenson County about their foreclosure rates. They hit an all time high last year with 212 cases. So far this year, there's nearly 50 cases.