Some homeowners just stop paying mortgages : And they use the money they save to get back on their feet

A growing number of the people whose homes are in foreclosure are refusing to slink away in shame. They are fashioning a sort of homemade mortgage modification, one that brings their payments all the way down to zero. They use the money they save to get back on their feet or just get by.

This type of modification does not beg for a lender's permission but is delivered as an ultimatum: Force me out if you can. Any moral qualms are overshadowed by a conviction that the banks created the crisis by snookering homeowners with loans that got them in over their heads.

"I tried to explain my situation to the lender, but they wouldn't help," said Mr. Pemberton's mother, Wendy Pemberton, herself in foreclosure on a small house a few blocks away from her son's. She stopped paying her mortgage two years ago after a bout with lung cancer. "They're all crooks."

Foreclosure procedures have been initiated against 1.7 million of the nation's households. The pace of resolving these problem loans is slow and getting slower because of legal challenges, foreclosure moratoriums, government pressure to offer modifications and the inability of the lenders to cope with so many souring mortgages.