According to the comptroller of the currency, mortgage delinquencies are very much on the rise. That is a clear warning bell with regard to the possible rise in mortgage foreclosures.

In my opinion, the keys to the prevention of defaults and foreclosures rests with the education of consumers about the mortgage process and their credit standing and helping homeowners when, through no fault of their own, difficulties arise in making monthly mortgage payments. The challenge is that high schools and colleges do little to focus on the importance of keeping a good credit standing. And I submit that the gratuitous showering of credit cards on college students does little to instill a sense of responsibility and a sense of living within ones means.

Experience at the Long Island Housing Partnership shows that mortgage counseling not only prepares a person for home ownership but can even help a prospective homeowner overcome past bad credit practices. Again, I want to emphasize that not enough is done with the young people of America to better educate them about credit responsibility. Education can contribute to solving the problem of defaults and foreclosures before they take place.

Once a mortgage is on the track to foreclosure, it is still not too late to help. A novel approach has been suggested in the State of New York. Legislation, sponsored by Owen Johnson in the New York Senate and Tom DiNapoli in the Assembly, would create a pilot program to provide emergency home mortgage assistance. With strict criteria, the program would provide mortgage counseling and permit a state agency to make payments for a homeowner, for up to 12 months, where, through no fault of the homeowner, mortgage payments cannot be fully met. Repayment guidelines are also provided in the proposal. The legislation is modeled on similar legislation in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. There is a good chance that it will pass next year.

With the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency also clearly stating that there are lower mortgage delinquency rates when borrowers receive "effective pre-and post-purchase counseling," we must start to emphasize ways, through education, to head off having to even deal with the question of how to dispose of foreclosed real estate.

When everything fails and foreclosures take place, the homes are often too expensive to rehabilitate. That is because they have not been properly cared for leading up to the foreclosure and then sit empty for too long before disposal.

As the number of foreclosures grow, the Department of Housing and Urban affairs is considering bulk transfers of foreclosed properties. That ill-advised program would create large numbers of absentee owners, and such owners, generally, do not help a neighborhood. HUD would be better off looking at the Fannie Mae program of working with homeowners in default and selling homes before they are foreclosed. The longer a homeowner is delinquent and the longer a home sits idle, the more difficult it will be to rehab. And the more homes in a community requiring rehabilitation, the more likely it is that surrounding property values will decline.

My concern is that an economic decline would impact the hardest on homeowners who already have fragile credit ratings. Most banks would prefer a call from a homeowner who is having trouble meeting mortgage payments rather than to wait for a costly foreclosure.