It is hard to read a paper or listen to a news broadcast without being reminded about the record number of foreclosures taking place across the country, and the many lives that are tragically affected by the loss of homes and the wealth-building equity homeownership provides.

I am frequently asked if Habitat for Humanity's homeowners are affected by the current foreclosure crisis, and thankfully, they are not.

One of the founding principles of Habitat is that we hold the mortgages on our homes, and we do not charge interest on these mortgages, so our homeowners build equity from their very first payment. The only increases they experience in their monthly mortgage payments are due to increases in insurance and taxes.

We also educate our homeowners about the dangers of predatory lending, and we protect the investment of our donors and local government in our homes with silent mortgages up to the market value of the property that only come due if the home is sold.

Since Habitat holds and services the mortgages on our homes, we are the first to know when one of our homeowners is experiencing difficulties making their payments.

When this occurs, homeowners meet with our family services director, who is a certified housing counselor, to set up a realistic payment plan and establish a budget. It is our goal to keep our homeowners in their homes, and we work with them through tough times such as illness or the loss of a spouse or a job.

In more than 20 years of selling more than 170 homes, we have foreclosed only twice, and in both cases we were able to reclaim the home and sell it to another qualified family. That is not to say we are lax when it comes to tracking and dealing with delinquencies, but we are flexible and compassionate when homeowners encounter unexpected or inescapable difficulties.

For most Habitat homeowners, they are the first in their family to own rather than rent, so they don't have firsthand experience of the financial benefits of homeownership. When we meet with and counsel homeowners who have fallen behind on their payments, we stress how important an asset their home is to them.

For many families of modest incomes, a home is their only way to build wealth for themselves and their children. So while we can't change the unsettling economic climate, we can and will work with our homeowners to keep them from losing what they have worked so hard to attain, a home of their own.

Susan Levy is the executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Orange County. She can be reached at aslevy@orangehabitat.org