The smile on toddler Sophia Isabella’s face was worth a thousand words. Actually it is worth the home that she and her parents — Mitzi and Joseph — were able to keep, thanks to their hard work, outreach by Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE), one-on-one foreclosure prevention counseling with Hawaiian Community Assets, and individualized attention from their lender, Bank of America.

Mitzi and Joseph Toro started on their journey to prevent foreclosure in February 2011 when FACE directed them to Hawaiian Community Assets, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development- approved housing counseling agency. With a Hawaiian Community Assets certified counselor, Pono Filimoeatu, the Toros were able to gather their financial documents, establish an affordable budget, and create a financial action plan outlining their work out options.

With this information, the Toros worked with Pono and a Bank of America home loan retention team to talk through their specific financial situation. The result: Work-out options became clearer, communication and cultural barriers were minimized, and at the end of the day, all parties were able to come to agreement in a dignified way. The Toro ohana and Bank of America secured a temporary loan modification agreement and in February 2012, signed the documents to make the modification permanent.

Unfortunately, during the time the Toros were working closely with Hawaiian Community Assets and the bank, other Hawaii families were not so lucky. This time last year, Hawaii families had lost $15 billion in home equity from 2008-2011, while foreclosure filings had increased 687 percent from 2006, according to the Center for Responsible Lending in 2011. The non-judicial foreclosure process, a process that is illegal in 20 states in the nation, was taking our Hawaii people from homeownership to homelessness in as few as 60-90 days.

Even if families followed the rules and submitted for a loan modification, inability to communicate with off-shore lenders combined with rampant "robo-signing" scandals left our families with few, if any, pathways to find a dignified way to prevent foreclosure.

Individualized attention is the pono way for us to address our foreclosure crisis in Hawaii. The Toros’ story shows us that by allowing borrowers, lenders and housing counseling agencies to work together, we promote financial education as a solution to our mortgage issues. Together, we are able to not only solve mortgage delinquencies and build mutual understanding of the unique geographical and cultural barriers we face as Hawaii homeowners, but also identify other key solutions such as the opportunity to refinance or use debt consolidation loans to free up money so we can come current on our mortgage payments.

With the passing of Act 48 during the 2011 state Legislature, we now extend the same opportunity provided to the Toros, to all Hawaii homeowners. Act 48 allows for homeowners going through the non-judicial foreclosure process to engage with their lender in the state’s new Dispute Resolution Program. Whether judicial or non-judicial foreclosure, with a third party mediator or a judge, we can sit with our lenders to learn from past mistakes, identify solutions and move forward together to build a foundation of wealth for our next generation of homeowners like Sophia Isabella.

Without this opportunity, we risk going away from the magnificent history of our ancestors and culture of Hawaii, a history that calls on us to use aloha and hooponopono when resolving our conflicts, and culture that makes it our kuleana to determine how our actions today will impact our children seven generations ahead.

Let us take this understanding and move forward together to address our foreclosure crisis.