Don Rich

<a href="http://government-grant.us/tag/first-time-house-grant/">First Time home Buyer Government Grants</a>

WHEN Matilde Amico’s employer cut back her overtime in September, her working hours as a dispatcher for an alarm company fell from a high of 70 hours a week to about 40.

By November she had missed two mortgage payments on the three-bedroom ranch in Mastic that she had bought as a single mother in 1989, and had kept by working either two jobs or long overtime hours. She received a notice from her lender threatening foreclosure.

“At that point, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Ms. Amico said recently. She lives in the house with her 24-year-old son, whose own small business recently failed. “I could see the sheriff coming and putting all of my things on the street.”

Ms. Amico told her story at a news conference held on April 12 by Suffolk County officials to announce that there is help available for homeowners facing foreclosure.

The county at first said the number of foreclosures on Long Island in 2007 was expected to total 18,854, citing data received from the office of Senator Charles E. Schumer. But the senator’s office later said that the county had misinterpreted the figures and that the 18,000 represented mortgages whose interest rates are likely to rise substantially this year.

It is a big step from rising mortgages rates to foreclosure, however. In all of 2006, 192 homes were lost through foreclosure on Long Island, according to RealtyTrac Inc., a firm that tracks foreclosures nationwide. (Other homes, of course, may have been sold to head off legal action.)

Foreclosure actions are often a result of illness or loss of income, as in Ms. Amico’s case. But many also result from risky loans given to home buyers during the recent real estate boom, officials say.

Higher payments have come due on large numbers of subprime mortgages, putting more borrowers in difficulty. Such mortgages — which often start with low “teaser” rates and then spike up to higher levels after a few years — are usually made to borrowers who have poor credit backgrounds or whose income may not be high enough to comfortably afford larger monthly payments.

As Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, said at the meeting, “Now we’re starting to see that these folks are starting to fall behind on mortgage payments.”