HOPE when?

Washington’s war on foreclosures, the latest in a string of sycophantic attempts to sway public opinion back in the favor of the very regulators that turned a blind eye to rampant irresponsible lending, is now being waged with carefully crafted press releases.

In the past two days, strikingly contradictory reports have emerged over the status of mortgage servicers’ efforts to stem the rising tide of foreclosures.

According to MortgageDaily.com, HOPE NOW is out with data showing it’s successfully preventing thousands of foreclosures. The servicing collective claims it prevented 170,000 foreclosures in May alone, and that almost 2 million repossessions have been averted since the program launched a year ago.

Consumer groups, on the other hand, aren’t so sure. Paul Jackson’s Housing Wire reports the California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC), advocates for low-income communities, says servicers are failing to keep troubled borrowers in their homes.

Jackson aptly points out that while both sides are engaged in an active public relations battle, what’s clear is that public perception about homeownership and lending practices is changing.

Irrespective of the data HOPE NOW or groups like the CRC gather and disseminate, defaults and the massive logistics required to work out the resulting situations have overwhelmed the loan servicing industry. No amount of government handouts, working groups or contrived federal lending facilities can contain the avalanche of home repossessions that’s already started down the hill.