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ST. LOUIS — With collapsible chairs for sleeping and sandwiches for sustenance, Edward and Teresa Cage claimed the third place in line at 12:30 a.m. Friday morning.

Six and a half hours later, the doors to the Chaifetz Arena swung open and the Cages found themselves followed by an estimated 2,000 other homeowners. All had a common goal: saving their homes from foreclosure.

The Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America’s "Save the Dream Tour" arrived at Saint Louis University on Friday in an effort to salvage mortgages and return economic stability to St. Louis area households battered by the recession.

Through Monday, the floor of the arena will hold 240 tables staffed by NACA counselors. By the time the tour leaves St. Louis, they will have heard hundreds of stories, variations on the Cages’ theme.

Between Teresa’s layoff and cuts to the regular overtime Edward earned as a Metro bus driver, the Cages have fallen three months behind on the mortgage of their three-bedroom in Herculaneum.

The couple said they had done all they could to keep the home.

Teresa, her eyes welling, related how they had even accepted their daughter’s offer to pull money from her college fund to help them make a house payment.

On Monday, an attorney staved off a foreclosure scheduled for Saturday.

NACA, they said, represents their last chance.

If all goes according to the carefully crafted NACA script, the Cages will eventually emerge with a restructured loan that will allow them to raise their family without further disruption.

"It’s up to them or we’ll be on the street," Edward Cage said after a two-hour session with counselor Bernard Taylor at Table 167.

Like thousands of other beleaguered homeowners who have attended similar engagements in Chicago, Cleveland and elsewhere around the country, the Cages are placing their fate in the hands of an organization that brings a religious zeal to financial salvation.

From the moment homeowners entered the arena Friday, their every move was choreographed by a staff that ushered them, with military precision, from "orientation" to pre-counseling staging to the comprehensive consultations. NACA, in effect, serves as a middleman between homeowners and lenders.

The financial information that Taylor received from the Cages, for instance, will be passed along to the couple’s lender cheap cash advance.

NACA, which receives its funding from private and public grants, will then attempt to renegotiate the terms of their loan.

The access to lenders that NACA enjoys, said Chief Executive Bruce Marks, is not available to the average homeowner.

"It’s really a mobile servicing operation," he said. "We’re willing to do the job" with lenders on behalf of borrowers.

Marks is fully aware that many doubt NACA’s ability to deliver the goods.

Craig O’Toole arrived at Chaifetz with a healthy dose of skepticism about NACA’s ability to save the $300,000 home he built in Robertsville.

"I’m leery," O’Toole acknowledged, as he waited to meet a counselor.

At times Friday it appeared NACA had a dual objective of winning over O’Toole and helping him get out from under a mortgage that is already a month overdue.

"It’s real! It’s real!" Lisa Pearsall shouted over the arena’s public address system, interrupting the counselor-client consultations from a stage at the north end of the room.

Encouraged by NACA personnel in yellow "Stop the Loan Sharks" T-shirts, Pearsall enthused that she and her husband had just cut the monthly payment on their home on the south side of Chicago by half.

Kenisha White of University City was not quite so enthusiastic about NACA’s services.

White said she was currently looking for another lender after NACA failed to follow through with its promises on her application for a home loan more than a year ago.

She also filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau of Eastern Missouri and Southern Illinois.

Chris Thetford, a spokesperson for the bureau, said the BBB had held back its endorsement of the company because of a "lack of transparency" in NACA’s claim to be a "charitable organization."

The Cages see NACA as a lifeline to working-class families, such as theirs.

"Everybody’s dream is owning a home, and we took advantage of that," said Edward Cage.

Taylor told the couple it would be two to three weeks before NACA could tell them, definitively, if their own dream would thrive.

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