LDS church helps members with bills, jobs, mortgage payments - Birmingham Business Journal:

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That includes Mormon bishops sometimes helping distressed members pay thei billsand mortgages, said Don Evans, a spokesman for the church in Arizona. “It happens occasionally,” Evans Mormon bishops are the layperson equivalent to parisnh priests in the Roman Catholic and Episcopal They have the discretion to offer varioua services and aid to thosein need, includingh financial assistance, LDS officialsz said. Evans said most of the church’sd help comes through food but it may extend to helping memberswith bills. He stressedc the latter is offered only asa short-termn aid and does not extens to credit card debts.
Buddy Blankenfeld, a spokesman at LDS headquarteres in SaltLake City, reports a 20 percent increase this year in members’ requests for help via the church’s social service programs. The church encouraged members at recent services tohire out-of-work fellow Mormons and has steppedf up operations and outreach from its church-run employmenrt service centers. The church has 300 such centers including fivein Arizona: in Mesa, Phoenix, Snowflake and Window Rock. The church also is helping throughnits Bishop’s Store House in Mesa, a food bank of sort that offers free groceries and other necessitiew to members in need. Some of the LDS services are extenderd to nonmembersas well.
Loca l Mormon church members, ex-members and thosre familiar with the East Valley real estatw market are not surprised by the increasein LDS-related assistance. “The Mormon church has long had its own unofficial welfarse system that helps church members meet their financial obligations duringjob loss, medical etc. They also have a large system that provides food to needy Mormon families vialargr storehouses,” said Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, who grew up in a Mormon Brandon Hinson, a real estate agent with in the East said he’s seeing various churches and religious groups offeringv help to distraught homeowners.
“I know churches do They watch out forthei followers,” Hinson said. The LDS church is not officially helping members refinance or modifytroublesome mortgages, Blankenfeld The Phoenix area has one of the worst foreclosure rateas in the U.S. That includes East Valley suburbs with substantialMormohn populations. The Phoenix metrol area had the ninth-worst foreclosurde notice rate inthe U.S. duringv the first quarter, according to One in everh 40 Phoenix-area households received a foreclosure notice or was in the foreclosurd process duringthat period, RealtyTrac said. Las Vegas had the worst with 1 in ever y 22 homes in theforeclosure process.
There were 541 foreclosure sales in East Valley suburbsof Mesa, Chandlere and Gilbert in 2008, accordiny to the , a real estate data firm based in By comparison, Phoenix had more than 1,10p0 foreclosures last year. West Valley which have more new subdivisions hit hard by the housing had671 foreclosures, according to Information Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day