On Wednesday, a friendly brown-haired man from Portland—his name is Ben Pray and he was formerly a policy advisor with Oregon Housing Community Services—sat down with the City Council and told them how to prevent the displacement of at least one hundred Seattle homeowners facing foreclosure.

Here's how it works (longer PDF version here):

1. Get some money—from a court settlement with banks over their corrupt lending practices, a government grant, private investors, or some combination;
2. Put foreclosed homes up for a short sale, which means selling it at below the cost of what is owed to the (often unscrupulous) mortgage lender. Select them by looking for people who've dealt with hardships but could handle a more reasonable mortgage;
3. Purchase the home;
4. Sell the home back to the struggling homeowner with a new “right-sized” mortgage, so they can re-purchase the home at market value (not the inflated value that put the homeowner undertwater) and stay in it!
5. Use the money for the repayment of the mortgage to assist the next homeowner.

Which means less neighborhood blight and happier people—and fewer suicides and evictions of veterans.

In Oregon, this is already happening. It's called the LRAPP, and there's another version of the program out in Boston. Pray testified before the council that it has successfully kept 140 people in their homes so far. Plus, the $10 million that a consortium of state and private partners invested in the program has been recouped and re-invested for a second year running.

Pray said Seattle can do the same thing. Pray that it does if you're the religious sort—and fast. Fifteen percent of Seattle homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, according to the city, and they're often up against manipulative banks that are loathe to negotiate loan modifications with them.

So far, the council has handled the problem of foreclosures with all the verve and swiftness of a slug sliming its way across a sidewalk. For over a year, there have been a litany of reports and task forces and committees talking about the issue for hours on end. People fighting foreclosures and the banks have come to City Hall over and over again and left empty-handed, boiling with rage—as the council has rejected every other proposal for a large-scale solution.

(And no, Sally Clark, a measly $150,000 of "outreach" to homeowners doesn't count. When a foreclosure lobbyist showers you with praise, you're doing it wrong).

"The bottom line is it's doable," said Council Member Nick Licata after Pray's presentation, "it's existing somewhere else, and it can save people's homes." And it'd at least be a start. Get on it, folks.