Some Doubt a Settlement Will End Mortgage Ills Even as government officials prepare to unveil new standards this week for how banks treat millions of Americans facing foreclosure, housing advocates and homeowners are skeptical the rules will be able to do something past efforts have not: provide a beleaguered borrower with one individual to help them navigate the mortgage maze. Susan Hall is trying to modify the mortgage on her home in Cotati, Calif., to avoid foreclosure. While the entire process of seeking a mortgage modification is complicated and time-consuming, few elements are as maddening as the inability to get through to a representative at the bank, or being asked for the same documents again and again. So the promise of a single point of contact has emerged as a crucial element in the much-ballyhooed $26 billion settlement reached earlier this month involving state attorneys general, the federal government and the five biggest mortgage servicers. These rules will apply nationwide and come with commitments of strong enforcement by federal and state authorities, but they carry a familiar ring for those experienced in the foreclosure process. Last April, the industry made many of the same pledges under a consent order with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and since then, consumer representatives say, there has been barely any improvement, adding that loan files continue to be handed off from one agent to another, sometimes weekly, and that even when a single person is assigned to their cases, one phone call after another goes unreturned. "It doesn't seem like much has changed," said Josh Zinner, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, or Nedap, a resource and advocacy center that works with community groups in New York. We're still seeing the same systematic problems. Susan Hall, a homeowner in Cotati, Calif., who has been trying to modify the terms of her mortgage since October 2009, thought she was in luck last October when she got a letter informing her that a single person had been assigned to her case by her servicer, Bank of America. Within weeks, she got three more letters, all with different names as her ostensible point of contact. None of them proved able to help. "I just keep getting passed from one person to another," she said. To make matters worse, her house is now valued at less than her mortgage, putting her among the 10.7 million American mortgage holders who are so-called underwater borrowers. Nobody is willing to talk to me. The architects of the new settlement say they are keenly aware of these complaints, and the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, alluded to them when he announced the deal with Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial on Feb. 9. "No more lost paperwork, no more excuses, no more runaround," he said. The new standards, he added, would "force the banks to clean up their acts." Besides improved servicing standards to be released in the next few days in Washington, the deal is also supposed to provide one million underwater borrowers with reductions in what they owe on their mortgages or the ability to refinance at lower rates. An additional 750,000 people who lost their homes to foreclosure from the beginning of 2008 to the end of 2011 are eligible to receive checks for up to roughly $2,000 each. While most homeowner advocates welcome the new settlement, many are skeptical about whether the banks will actually change their behavior. "There's a lot I've seen over the past few years that makes me very wary," said Lisa Sitkin, a lawyer with Housing and Economic Rights Advocates in Oakland, Calif. Things fall through the cracks all the time. Our view is that the banks are still not doing what needs to be done. Despite last April's settlement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, for example, she said: "Things have improved only marginally. Every week, the banks come up with new ways to make borrowers" lives incredibly difficult." Officials at the comptroller's office insist that the banks have made considerable progress since the consent order was agreed to last spring, adding that the single point of contact and other improvements should be largely in effect by the end of 2012.