Woodstock Institute and more than 120 Chicago community investment stakeholders celebrated the successes of local leaders and learned about the causes behind the financial crisis at last week’s 2012 Community Investment Awards and screening of The Flaw. Woodstock Institute president Dory Rand presented Community Investment Awards to Adam Gross of Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI), Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, and Mary Ellen Podmolik of the Chicago Tribune.

The Principal Reduction Alternative (PRA) portion of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP)  experienced slow growth in new participants, new data show. PRA, which is designed to incentivize servicers to write down principal as part of the loan modification process, saw relatively flat levels of 15-17,000 trial modifications for the past seven months. At the same time, PRA permanent modifications grew steadily, suggesting that servicers are converting trial modifications into permanent ones but are not aggressively recruiting new participants to the program.

The Eastgate neighborhood in Park Forest, a village thirty miles south of Chicago, has seen its share of troubles. Relatively isolated from other development by the Sauk Trail Woods Forest Preserve, many of the neighborhood’s 300-odd homes are in poor condition. Crime and blight have been on the rise, causing the Village of Park Forest to invest more and more funds into finding solutions to revitalize the area.

CHICAGO—Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan will deliver the keynote address at Woodstock Institute’s annual Community Investment Awards and screening of David Sington’s documentary The Flaw.  Attorney General Madigan will focus her remarks on how the attorney general settlement with the country’s five largest servicers will impact Illinois homeowners.