Homeowner Education and Loan Protection (H.E.L.P.) Program
What is H.E.L.P.?
The Homeowner Education and Loan Protection (H.E.L.P.) Program is a model program and blueprint of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office to address crimes involving real estate on a multi-disciplinary, multi-system collaborative basis.
H.E.L.P. is a joint effort of public and private agencies, disciplines, and individuals, facilitated by the District Attorney’s leadership. Under the H.E.L.P. umbrella, the District Attorney, the California Attorney General, State and Federal Law Enforcement Agencies, Financial Institutions, Non-Profit Housing Counselors, Consumer Protection Groups, and Probation collaborate to address the dangers of real estate fraud against homeowners.
Mission of the H.E.L.P. Program
H.E.L.P. Program
The mission of H.E.L.P. is to build and increase the capacity of law enforcement agencies, financial institutions, and other community groups to effectively respond to and combat real estate fraud in their jurisdictions.
The primary goals of H.E.L.P. are protection of a victim’s home, prevention of large-scale scams, and accountability for individual criminals. H.E.L.P. provides law enforcement and community partners with effective and proven strategies to improve local, regional, and national capacity to identify, intervene in, investigate, and prosecute real estate fraud cases while supporting and educating homeowners against fraud.
“Crimes involving real estate strikes at the very heart of the American Dream: Home ownership,” says David Lim, Deputy District Attorney and a member of the H.E.L.P. team. “Con artists in the field of real estate fraud design elaborate, complex schemes designed to steal not only money and property, but the basic dignity associated with home ownership.”
Based on this reality, H.E.L.P. combats the real estate fraud epidemic from a collaborative and coordinated multi-system approach. Because of the complexity and scope of real estate fraud, H.E.L.P. reaches beyond the local jurisdictions that it serves to collaborate regionally and nationally, and enable partners who are combating real estate fraud to replicate in their jurisdictions the successes H.E.L.P. has achieved in Alameda County.
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