As we all know, homeowners across the nation have been struggling to avoid foreclosure, whether through loan modifications, short sales, deeds in lieu of foreclosure or simply by trying to work with their mortgage lenders. Ohio residents have not been immune from the foreclosure epidemic, and many have experienced the same frustrations of one woman whose situation was recently profiled by a newspaper's watchdog reporter.

Among the many reasons people are forced into foreclosure is illness or injury. When it is, staying in one's home can become a fight to survive. This has been the case for one woman who had made her mortgage payments regularly for well over a decade before a 2008 accident left her unable to work.

After suffering kidney failure, along with blood clots and internal bleeding of mysterious origin, she was unable to keep up with her monthly payments, so she turned to her bank, JPMorgan Chase, and applied for a loan modification.

She was approved for a trial modification, and she did everything she could to make that permanent -- ultimately paying more than $50,000 in mortgage principal and legal fees to Chase.

Two weeks later, Chase informed her that she had failed to qualify for the permanent loan modification. They moved forward with the foreclosure action.

Luckily, after her plight was brought to the public's attention through the newspaper's watchdog report, an attorney took her case. He is now representing her and 200 other homeowners in a collective action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase which claims that their securitized mortgages are invalid and unenforceable. Even if that case is unsuccessful, her lawyer says, she would likely be given the right to appeal her foreclosure.

For now, she remains in her home of 16 years, at least until the litigation is complete.

"I'm lucky to be alive," she told reporters -- and just as lucky to have a home. "I didn't think I was going to make it to Christmas."

Source: Star Tribune, "Revisiting Whistleblower, Part II," Jane Friedmann and Pat Pheifer, Jan. 2, 2012