“In 2009 we filed bankruptcy, that’s when everything started because my husband got laid off, and a few months later I got laid off also,” said Maria, a Cleveland homeowner for the past 12 years. “Everything was going down the drain.” Like so many others in Cleveland and across the country, the recession threatened to displace Maria and her husband and rip away the home where they created over a decade’s worth of memories.

Maria was 24-years-old in 2002 when she and her husband entered the market to buy their first home. They looked in many areas but finally landed on a home in a nice, quiet neighborhood. They felt they were getting a fair price on the home and took out a fixed-rate mortgage, managing their monthly payments with no problem.

In 2009, however, a dark cloud was hanging over the U.S economy and the city of Cleveland. According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in Cleveland climbed to as high as 11.7 percent in 2009. Maria and her husband were both engulfed by the wave of job loss when he was laid off from his job working in the shipping department of warehouse. Several months later, Maria was laid off from her job as a mortgage coordinator. Things were quickly unraveling for the couple.

“My mother got sick, everything started at once—job, illness, a lot of problems started to happen,” said Maria. “That’s when we started falling behind.”

After falling behind on their mortgage payments, Maria and her husband tried working with their lender to find a solution that would help them avoid foreclosure. Ultimately, the couple decided filing for bankruptcy would be the surest way for them to hang onto their home.

Like many others during this time period, Maria and her husband’s loan was sold to a new lender. Their loan was eventually purchased by AHP in pool 2013C. Often times when loans are sold, borrowers end up with very little information about the new lender. When Maria and her husband discovered AHP had purchased their loan, they immediately sought out their options.

“We didn’t have a lot of information from the other companies, so when I started getting the information from you guys, that’s when we started calling and trying to find out how we can make arrangements to keep the house– we wanted to keep it,” Maria said.

In working with AHP, Maria and her husband were able to settle their delinquent payments and lower their monthly payments from $565 to $400. Maria found the process of working with AHP to be very easy and felt very relieved to have successfully achieved a loan modification. “It’s going to be very positive for us because we’re going to be able to stay in the house, financially it’s going to help us a lot too,” said Maria.

Maria said her neighborhood was not overwhelmed by the foreclosure crisis, but that a fair amount of homes were vacated in her area. Now, she says people are beginning to move back into these homes and the abandoned dwellings are becoming less common. CNN recently reported that nearly 6,000 homes are being prepared for demolition in Cleveland to eliminate the blight that is dragging down communities. Through loan modifications like the one for Maria and her husband, AHP also aims to uplift communities by keeping people in neighborhoods who truly want to be there.

“We have memories here, we have also put money into the house throughout all the years. We didn’t want to start over, we just wanted to continue and stay here,” Maria said. “We like the neighborhood too, it’s very quiet.”