With the national subprime mortgage crisis predicted to get worse in Philadelphia this year, Council Majority Leader Marian B. Tasco and Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. said they would offer a resolution today calling on Sheriff John D. Green and Common Pleas Court President Judge C. Darnell Jones II to impose a moratorium on foreclosure sales involving high-cost mortgages.

"We don't want to be like Ohio," said Curtis Jones, citing the way that state's housing market was gutted by subprime loans.

A spokesman for Green said he welcomed the resolution - he imposed a 30-day moratorium in 2004 - but he cannot do it alone.

"His plans are to have the moratorium, but again, it's not the decision of just the sheriff," said Green's spokeswoman, Wanda Davis.

Tasco said the resolution - a nonbinding piece of legislation - is a step in the process, which would require a petition to Darnell Jones, who could not be reached for comment. In 1983, Sheriff Joseph Sullivan successfully petitioned the president judge for a one-year stay on about 300 sheriff's sales.

Other observers suggested the city does not have the authority to interfere in sheriff's sales, which may invoke the state's sole authority to regulate the banking industry. One of the sheriff's main jobs is to facilitate the selling of foreclosed property, for both lenders and borrowers.

In the presidential campaign, Republican John McCain on Tuesday said the problem was best solved by the private sector and not with government intervention, while Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have called for various levels of federal assistance.

Mayor Nutter's spokesman, Doug Oliver, acknowledged that legal questions remain, but said the city should pursue every avenue toward protecting homeowners.

"If legal obstacles and hurdles exist that would prevent such a moratorium, we should take every step to address them, because the people of Philadelphia need this type of relief," Oliver said.

E. Robert Levy, executive director of the Mortgage Bankers Association of Pennsylvania, said such interference would drive banks out of the state and raise the cost of mortgage financing.

"If you just simply shut the door legally . . . everyone who does lending in Pennsylvania obviously will put their money into states where they won't have to worry about the process being shut down," Levy said.

A better way is to allow banks to work out loans with customers, Levy said, through early notification of possible foreclosure, education, and counseling about how to work out a loan.

The problem with that strategy is that not all banks are tackling the problem as aggressively as others, Tasco said. Housing advocates are seeking a streamlined process so that they can better help people rework their subprime loans.

"We just kind of want a breather period so these subprime servicers can offer a standardized formula that housing counselors can offer to people," said Ian Phillips, state legislative director for the affordable-housing advocacy organization ACORN, which asked Council for the resolution.

Looming this year are two-year adjustable mortgages taken out by Philadelphia homeowners in 2006 that will shoot up to higher interest rates and payments this year, Phillips said. In a report last year, ACORN stated that 3,206 high-cost loans were likely to go into foreclosure.