With mortgage defaults bruising cities across the nation and home losses continuing to mount in Western Pennsylvania, community leaders throughout Allegheny County kicked off a campaign yesterday to try to help homeowners in crisis.

The unprecedented local effort to save homes in the greater Pittsburgh area came one day after the federal government seized control of the mighty mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in its latest effort to help reverse a housing and credit crisis that has consistently worsening more than a year after the trouble started.

The takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the federal government will be good news for those looking to buy a home or hoping to refinance their mortgages if it leads to lower interest rates, as experts expect.

But for homeowners already behind on their mortgage payments, or who owe more than their homes are now worth, the plan unveiled Sunday by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson offers little in the way of extra relief.

"The bailout will give the mortgage industry a stability that we haven't had in a couple of years," said Rich Cosner, president of Prudential California Realty. "But frankly no, it won't help (struggling borrowers) to refinance."

There were 6,906 foreclosures in Allegheny County between January 2006 and July 2008, according to RealSTATs, a real estate information company. The combined total for Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties for that time period was 10,923.

About 45,000 subprime foreclosures statewide are expected to cost Pennsylvania about $34 million in taxes next year.

"Here our area prices have been pretty steady and lenders have been responsive," said Dan Onorato, Allegheny County chief executive. "So, (as a result) few chickens have come home to roost in Allegheny County."

While foreclosures in the metropolitan Pittsburgh area are well below those in other major cities in the country, a growing number of homeowners here are losing homes in many cases because they are embarrassed to seek help when they fall behind in payments.

Saleem Ghubril, an ordained Presbyterian minister who founded the Pittsburgh Project on the North Side in 1985 and recently was named the first executive director of the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program, said it's time to destigmatize foreclosure.

"Foreclosures happen to regular ordinary people who might not be at fault," Rev. Ghubril told community leaders at yesterday's Relief Pitchers Summit hosted by the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh. "I want to challenge all of you to reach out and be a bridge for those who don't know help is available.

"Offer to drive someone to the counseling place," he said. "Make the phone call for them if necessary."

The event was organized to address the inability of many loan servicers and housing counseling agencies to reach out and try to negotiate with homeowners on the brink of mortgage failure.

The diverse group of more than 200 civic leaders who met at Regional Enterprise Tower, Downtown, have pledged to play a new role in the community as "Relief Pitchers" in the battle against foreclosures. They will reach out to homeowners in their organizations who need an extra push to get help from housing counselors at the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency before it's too late.

"In baseball, a relief pitcher is called when things aren't going so well for the team," said Brian Hudson, executive director of PHFA. "The outcome of the game hangs in the balance.

"Studies show that the biggest issue standing between families forfeiting their homes and saving them is fear," he said. "As a trusted leader in your community, congregation or workplace, you're in a unique position to bring this issue out in the open. By providing a few timely messages, you can make a difference between families keeping or losing their homes."

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a critical and increasingly dominant role in the mortgage market. The companies buy mortgage loans from banks and package those loans into securities that they either hold or sell to U.S. and foreign investors. That allows traditional lenders like Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual to make more loans.

Together, Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee about $5 trillion in home loans, about half the nation's total. But an alarming number of those loans started going into default, draining the companies' financial reserves and sending a chill through credit markets worldwide. As investors grew more skittish, borrowing costs started rising. By placing Fannie and Freddie into a conservatorship, the government is promising investors that the companies' debt is as safe as the Treasury Department's.

While not a cure-all, the bailout is a step in the right direction, industry observers say. It will "keep the lanes in the mortgage freeway open," said Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, possibly putting the market on the road to recovery.