John Beale, Post-Gazette Debbie Mattie, left, of Glassport, left, Kathy Bayne, of Natrona Heights, center, and Linda Geidel, a neighbor of Bayne's, protest the May 3 sheriff's sale. Mattie and Bayne got reprieves. Click photo for larger image. Related data How the foreclosure process works (.pdf format) The 10 Pittsburgh neighborhoods with the most mortgage foreclosures from 1998 to 2001. The 10 Allegheny County municipalities with the most mortgage foreclosures between 1998 and 2001.

The crowd in the courthouse's Gold Room is a mix of nearly 200 attorneys, Allegheny County Sheriff's Department employees, real estate speculators, homeowners and housing advocates.

They gather on the first Monday of each month for cut-and-dried legal proceedings tinged with emotion and heartbreak.

When the sale begins, the clerk recites the addresses of hundreds of residential properties scheduled to be sold that day.

And one by one, homes from all over the county, each represented by a thick sheaf of papers documenting its journey through the foreclosure or delinquency process, are sold, usually to attorneys representing mortgage holders or collection companies. Sometimes, the sale of a property is postponed. For the uninitiated, particularly those within hours of losing their homes, it can be terrifying.

That's what Debbie Mattie encountered on May 3. She had come to fight for her Glassport home, scheduled to be sold after the Matties had fallen far behind on their mortgage payments. Her husband had started a new job that day and couldn't be with her.

"It's very scary to be down here by yourself and not know what to do, not knowing who to talk to," said Mattie, who had never been in the courthouse before.

	Click photo for larger image. MATTIE HOME Problem: Couple lost jobs last year and could not make mortgage payments. Status: Seeking alternative pay options with loan company. Quote: "It's just like a black hole."

Instead, with the help of Maryellen Hayden, executive director of the Pittsburgh office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, Mattie was able to get a 60-day delay. To do that she first had to speak to sheriff's Solicitor William E. Stockey. She told him that she and her husband lost their jobs at the end of 2003 when they already were several months behind in their $535 monthly mortgage payments.

Stockey tersely told her what to do: File a verbal petition in motions court.

"That was speaking Greek to me," Mattie said. "I had no idea what he was talking about."

Over the next half hour, she found motions court on the seventh floor of the City-County Building across the street, where she was treated rudely by the staff and sent to the first-floor prothonotary's office to retrieve her file. She returned to motions court, where her petition was granted, and finally arrived back in the Gold Room to report to Stockey.

She got a 30-day delay, and an extra month was added when a glitch in her paperwork was discovered.

While Mattie has not found a job in the month since, a relative has agreed to provide child care for her 4-year-old daughter, Morgan, saving her $500 a month while she looks for work. She hopes her lender will allow the couple either to make additional payments when possible or tack what's due on the end of their $60,000 mortgage.

Homeowners like Mattie are just part of the scene. Many others are attorneys bidding on the properties for large statewide or national law firms, who, in turn, represent mortgage companies or collection agencies reacquiring defaulted properties or those with delinquent taxes. Once the lenders have the property, it's cleaned and listed with a real estate agent at full market value.

John Beale, Post-Gazette Millie Segreti sits on the front porch of her house in Wilkinsburg as her dog, Kane, looks out one of the replacement windows Segreti financed with a home equity loan that is now in arrears. She says she's resigned to living on the street if she can't find housing when she's evicted. Segreti has an application on file with the Allegheny County Housing Authority. Click photo for larger image.

With each sale, the county also makes money. State law allows the sheriff's department to collect a fee on property and homes sold, and this year that amount is expected to total more than $7 million.

"There's nothing good about that," said Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato. "Seven million dollars is a drop in a bucket in terms of the cost of sheriff sales, the cost to homeowners and the impact on neighborhoods.

"In the long run, the county's much better off if you have productive taxpayers paying their taxes."

In the Gold Room, the speculators compete with the attorneys, but face greater obstacles.

They must come up with 10 percent of the purchase price in cash at the time of the sale and pay the balance, as well as any liens and other costs, within a week. And that's without having a chance to inspect the property first.

Millie Segreti doesn't care about any of that. Until Friday, she only cared that her home of 18 years was scheduled to be sold tomorrow at sheriff's sale. But her lender agreed Friday to a 60-day postponement while Segreti waits to hear whether she'll receive disability payments.

	Click photo for larger image. SEGRETI HOME Problem: Non-payment of remodelling loan. Status: Home is scheduled to be sold in 60 days at sheriff's sale. Looking for public housing. Quote: "I have no income. I have nothing."

Her problems began in 1977 when a home remodeler offered to redo all the windows of her Wilkinsburg home, and she agreed. The price tag was $16,000.

"They came around talking that we can do the windows and fix the place up," said Segreti, 54. "I have a lot of windows but not that many." To make matters worse, she said the remodelers did shoddy work.

Out of work since 1999 because of a work-related accident, Segreti kept up with the $253 monthly bill for two years through disability payments. Once those payments ended, though, she fell behind.

Segreti first came to the sheriff's sale on April 5, the day her home originally was to be sold. Because she had a hearing the next day on eligibility for social security benefits, sheriff's solicitor Stockey called her lender in Delaware and convinced it to give Segreti two months' grace.

That period was to have expired tomorrow, before Segreti received Friday's extension. Her home now will be scheduled for the Aug. 2 sheriff's sale.

But Segreti, who ekes out a living as a chaperone on bingo buses, is taking no chances: She's applied for Section 8 housing.

"The worry is still there," she said. "I think it's really a shame."