Story and photos by Diana Pando
Jeidy Zavala Aguilar and her family live on a quiet side-street that smells like bread off of Kedzie and Archer Avenue on the southwest side of the city. Between babysitting her nieces and picking up her children from school, Jeidy made time to chat with us about what she and her husband Armando did to keep her home from being foreclosed upon.
When I arrive to interview Jeidy she opens the door of her modest two-story home and motions me in with a warm smile. She leads me into her cozy kitchen to talk about how they got into the situation in the first place. She explains that her husband Armando is a roofer who works seasonal jobs and in the winter is out of work for three months. During this time, their mortgage rate increased and they found themselves struggling to pay a $1,400 mortgage each month. At the time, they decided they were going to make paying the mortgage a priority even if it meant not paying other bills. As time went on, they found themselves not being able to pay neither the mortgage nor bills that had accumulated.
Suddenly, their family found themselves on the brink of foreclosure. After realizing that they might lose their home, Jeidy and her husband spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out what to do. If they lost their home they could rent an apartment but now with four children they were afraid that no one would rent to them or allow their children to run or play in the back yard. As Jeidy and her husband contemplated what to do, their older daughters started to pick up on their stress and even considered withdrawing from school to help the family pay the mortgage. Their children’s patrimony that they had worked so hard for was now in jeopardy of being lost.
Jeidy and Armando decided they needed to do something. So they went to Second Federal Credit Union to see how they could keep their home. It was there that they were referred to Alicia Gutierrez, Home Preservation Manager, at The Resurrection Project who presented them with a variety of options.
They soon learned through Alicia that they were eligible for the Illinois Hardest Hit Fund. The focus of this fund is to provide mortgage relief to homeowners that are either unemployed or underemployed and trying to find ways to increase their income to pay their mortgages. Though this program expired at the end of September, there are still other programs homeowners may be eligible to apply for to help them keep their homes.
“Alicia supported and guided us through the whole process reassuring us that all the paper work was in the review process and that she would help us find a solution,” says Jeidy. “It took a month for our application to be reviewed and processed, but when we found out we were approved for the mortgage modification we were so happy.”
Going through the foreclosure prevention process has been a learning experience for the Zavala Aguilar family. Everyday there are people like Jeidy and her family on the verge of losing their homes because they don’t know that there are free home prevention resources available to them. “What I learned the most from this process,” Jeidy says, “is that you have to keep fighting to keep your home and try to find resources and organizations that will help you. They are there but you have to ask around like we did at Second Federal Credit Union.”
Today, the Zavala Aguilar family pays a mortgage of $720.00 a month and is no longer behind on their mortgage. Jeidy and her family express their gratitude to those who helped them, including The Resurrection Project.
“It was a blessing to meet Alicia Gutierrez at The Resurrection Project because she is an angel who arrived to us during a very difficult moment when we were about to lose our home.”

Return to Nueva Vida October 2013 here.