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In May, Alvin Clavon received a foreclosure notice on the simple, Spanish-style house in South Los Angeles that he shares with his wife and three boys.

Clavon bought the place in 2003 with a fixed-rate loan. They painted the walls, fixed the yard and made friends with the neighbors, who let the Clavon boys pick their basil.

In 2005, worked with a mortgage broker to refinance his home with another fixed-rate loan. But on the night before signing, the family was offered an interest-only, adjustable-rate mortgage.

Clavon, a 35-year-old executive assistant at a bank, said he felt stuck. The ball was rolling, he trusted his broker and so the next day, he signed the loan.

"Turned out to be the worst thing I could have done," said Clavon, who like so many others in danger of losing their home to the U.S.

State EDA will be on $3 million hook if Western Greenbrier Co ...

The West Virginia Economic Development Authority is on the hook for $3 million if a proposed $400 million clean coal power plant in Greenbrier County does not get built.Western Greenbrier Co-Generation ran into financial trouble when its efforts to refinance a $4.87 million loan with First National Bank of Ronceverte fell through, the Associated Press reported last week.The Economic Development Authority — the state's financing agency for development projects — had guaranteed $3 million of the loan, said David Warner, the authority's executive director. First National had decided not to extend the loan, he said, and Summit Community Bank had agreed to do so. Warner said that during its Oct. 18 meeting the authority's board of directors approved the same loan guarantee for Summit Community Bank."Western Greenbrier Co-Generation was not able to meet all of the conditions to close the loan with Summit," Warner said.

Subprime loan crisis sparking action from lawmakers

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Tony Brooks blames a mortgage broker for the loss of his home, and wanted state lawmakers to know his story.Brooks, 48, drove twice to Olympia from Seattle in the span of a week to testify for a crackdown on brokers, even after he was turned away by a Senate committee the first time."There are predatory lenders out there ripping off people with subprime loans," Brooks said. "By me going down there, they will see somebody that it happened to."Mortgage brokers are in the cross-hairs of some of the measures in the Legislature's response to fears that the subprime loan crisis will soon hit the state hard. As the housing market weakens across the country, the hardest hit have been borrowers of subprime loans, typically people who don't meet the credit standards for a conventional loan.