DSNews delivers stories, ideas, links, companies, people, events, and videos impacting the mortgage default servicing industry.
Issue link: http://digital.dsnews.com/i/1035902
32 AN ISLAND IN NEED One year on from Hurricane Maria's devastating impact, the island of Puerto Rico still struggles to rebuild. Here's how an upcoming summit is hoping to unite industry experts toward finding solutions to help Puerto Rico and her people. On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm. e disaster and its aftermath took a heavy toll on the island, killing nearly 3,000 people, crippling infrastructure, and devastating the island's housing. An upcoming industry summit named PR18 hopes to help speed the island's recovery. On November 14–16, the Five Star Institute will convene PR18, a leadership summit to be held at the San Juan Marriott in San Juan, Puerto Rico. PR18 will bring together executives and representatives from mortgage banks, servicers, suppliers, non-depository institutions, and government agencies, all working to assess Puerto Rico's current situation, identify areas of need, and create plans on how to best assist the island and her people during this critical time of recovery. Over the course of the day-and-a-half summit, PR18 will explore the challenges still facing Puerto Rico from a multitude of angles. After a morning keynote address on Wednesday, November 14, the day will begin with a "State of the Island" roundtable discussion that will examine Hurricane Maria's initial impact, what has happened in the year since, and where Puerto Rico stands today. From that macro perspective, PR18's agenda will then begin to narrow its focus into more specific elements of the island's recovery. Roundtable sessions will cover assistance policies and programs designed to help the island's inhabitants, why current strategies regarding foreclosure moratoriums and forbearance aren't an ideal fit for Puerto Rico's situation, and how the island's housing inventory can be rebuilt better, stronger, and more resistant to future storms. Other roundtable sessions will delve into borrower outreach initiatives and how law firms can help mitigate losses in the aftermath of a disaster. While Puerto Rico's recovery has made progress thanks to the hard work of the people and volunteers on the ground, there is still much work to be done and an enormous financial burden standing in the way of a full recovery. On September 21, 2018, the day after the one-year anniversary of the disaster, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson and Puerto Rico's Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced the formal execution of a $1.5 billion grant agreement to help citizens in Puerto Rico to recover from Hurricanes Irma and Maria, $1 billion of which will be allocated to rebuilding housing. However, an August 2018 report to Congress by the island's government estimated that a full recovery will require an additional $139 billion. e island is also in the midst of an overwhelming foreclosure crisis. In July 2018, the New York Times reported that, after the traditional foreclosure moratoriums began to expire, nearly 300 new foreclosure actions had been completed in the month prior. To further complicate an already complicated situation, the Times reported that as many as 25,000 island residents had relocated after the storm, meaning they could be facing foreclosures without even realizing the moratoriums had expired. Ricardo Ramos-González, coordinator of a consumer legal aid clinic at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, told the Times that "e main problem here is that people are not prepared, and a lot of borrowers will be taken by surprise. A lot of people are going to lose their homes." Nevertheless, there is some good news. More than three-quarters of real estate professionals in Puerto Rico reported feeling "optimistic" or "very optimistic" about "the recovery of the real estate business in Puerto Rico," according to a recent survey by Point2 Homes, a real estate website for Americans and Canadians seeking properties on the island. Tourism also remains strong, with 80 percent of Puerto Rico's hotels back in business and an anticipated 1.7 million future visitors having already booked a stay during cruise season. is should translate to about $250 million in revenue for the island, according to Point2 Homes. e challenges along the road to Puerto Rico's recovery are many and daunting. Finding solutions to those problems will require a commitment of time, resources, and outside- the-box thinking. PR18 will hopefully prove a fruitful step toward that critical level of industry collaboration. To learn more about PR18, visit the official website at FiveStarPR18.com.