"Philadelphia is clearly one of the better-organized places," Kathleen Day, spokeswoman for the Center for Responsible Lending, a national advocacy group in Durham, N.C., said yesterday.

Unfortunately, she said, "it's a patchwork quilt" across the country, with some places having strong advocates for homeowners while others do not.

South Jersey, for example, where foreclosure filings were up 33 percent through March compared with the same period a year ago, lacks a coordinated network of housing and consumer advocates to react to that increase the way groups in Philadelphia have, experts said.

In the three months through March, the number of foreclosure filings in Burlington, Camden and Gloucester Counties - with a combined population of 1.25 million - climbed to 2,055 from 1,549 in the same period a year earlier, according to data from the New Jersey judiciary.

In Philadelphia, with a population of 1.45 million, the number of filings climbed to 1,680 for the first 12 weeks of this year, up 12 percent from 1,562 in the same period a year earlier, according to data from the Philadelphia Office of the Prothonotary.

Philadelphia housing-counseling agencies, legal-services lawyers, and other advocates for homeowners have a history of fighting foreclosure dating to the early 1980s, when industrial-job losses caused a surge in foreclosures here and in Pittsburgh.

That led to a temporary halt to sheriff's sales in 1983 while the state legislature enacted the Homeowners' Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program, which provides loans to get borrowers through a temporary disruption in income.

But that program was not designed for unaffordable subprime loans, which is why advocates pushed for the city's new program to treat owner-occupied properties differently from commercial, vacant and investor-owned properties.

The key is a timeline that requires a meeting of the borrower, the lender and their attorneys within 30 to 45 days of a foreclosure filing. The hope is that lenders will alter the terms of high-cost loans to make them affordable. The program expires at the end of 2009, according the regulation issued yesterday by the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

"This is one of the more innovative approaches we've seen," said Tobi Walker, a senior officer with Pew Charitable Trusts, which yesterday issued a report analyzing how states have responded to the foreclosure crisis.

Organizations that worked on the Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Pilot Program included the city's Law Department, the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office, law firms representing lenders, the Philadelphia Bar Association, Philadelphia Legal Assistance, the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, and Community Legal Services. Common Pleas Court President Judge C. Darnell Jones II and Judge Annette Rizzo oversaw the effort.

Alys Cohen, staff attorney with the National Consumer Law Center in Washington, said advocates needed a high level of knowledge and a good command of strategy to be successful. "Advocates in Philadelphia do a very good job at both," she said.