When I started working for ACORN in 2004, I was one of only four white people employed in their North Philadelphia office. The office was in a very run-down tenement on North Broad Street, abutted by an abandoned lot on one side and a black baptist church on the other. The furniture could only described as ratty and unsuitable for anyone's home. Most of the day-to-day work going on was in counseling. The main area of counseling was for people who had been suckered into predatory mortgages that they quickly discovered they couldn't afford. Every day desperate people filed into the office begging for help in avoiding foreclosure.