By Courtland Milloy
Wednesday, July 18, 2007; B01

Where I live in Prince George's County, new homes are popping up all over the place. Some are luxury digs with home theaters, designer bathrooms and gourmet kitchens. And they are selling fast. Forget that old American dream of two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot. Some of my neighbors own three or four cars and have freezers full of steaks.

But signs abound that success is an illusion in many cases. Just look at the proliferation of placards on utility poles, even around my house in relatively affluent Fort Washington: "Behind in your mortgage payments?" "Need fast cash?" "Get out of debt now."

For a county that has come to epitomize the striving, upwardly mobile African American, these tacky eyesores have become embarrassing reminders that many of us are financially illiterate and living beyond our means.

"I think some of us just overbought into the American dream," said Stan Brown, an African American lawyer in Largo whose clients include residents who are drowning in debt. "It's true that Prince George's is the wealthiest predominately black county in the United States, but you have lots of first-generation college graduates who aren't the most sophisticated when it comes to money. They've got good government jobs and wanted nice homes, nice cars and private schools for the kids. But some of them didn't figure out how much these things would cost in the long run and ended up getting in over their heads."

Enter the mortgage broker with enticing plans to help the distressed homeowner out from under a mountain of debt -- and winding up with his house. Brown represents about 20 of 400 people who recently filed a class-action lawsuit accusing Metropolitan Money Store Corp. of Lanham of defrauding them out of their homes.

With mortgage foreclosures rising dramatically throughout the Washington area, government agencies and nonprofit organizations are offering more programs to protect homeowners from fraud and improve credit counseling.

In Prince George's, where mortgage foreclosures are the highest in the region, a Homeownership Preservation Coalition has been formed to guide residents through the complexity of refinancing. In neighboring Montgomery County, where there have been more foreclosures in the first quarter of this year than in all of 2006, a public forum will be held at 7 tonight at the Rockville Library to discuss the risks of subprime mortgages and how to stave off foreclosures.

But the need for financial education goes much deeper, and ought to start long before people try to buy a house.

One of the plaintiffs in the Metropolitan Money Store case has produced documents showing that he went to settlement expecting to receive a home equity loan of nearly $200,000 -- then signed away his home and walked out with a check for $153.

Another plaintiff says he walked in expecting to get a $200,000 equity loan and walked out with a promise that $15,000 would be mailed at a later date. He never got even that. Some people don't need classes in home refinancing; they need common sense.

"What blows my mind is the number of people who end up giving away their homes because they did not take time to read the fine print," Brown said. "They just saw a check being offered to them, and they grabbed it. Not only that, you have people that will go through a major transaction and not even get copies of the documents they've signed. They have no idea what they've done and aren't likely to find out until it's too late."

Phillip Robinson, executive director of Civil Justice Inc., a nonprofit legal-aid group in Baltimore, is a tad more sympathetic. "I went to law school and still have difficulty making sense of some of these documents. So I know it's going to be rough on someone who only finished high school," he said.

Still, he agrees that you don't need a high school education to know that if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it. Just find someone who does.

And not by looking at signs on a utility pole, either.

E-mail:milloyc@washpost.com