A congressman, a councilman and a judge gathered yesterday in City Hall Courtroom 676 - where Philadelphia's foreclosure-prevention program has saved hundreds of residents' homes - to ask the Obama administration to fund the rescue of thousands more.

The Courtroom 676 program relies on money from the cash-strapped city, a volunteer army of lawyers and a court order that forbids lenders to foreclose until they go before the judge and seek to modify burdensome mortgages and keep struggling homeowners in their homes.

John Dodds, director of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, said the 10-month-old Courtroom 676 program is exactly what President Obama had in mind when he announced $2 billion in Neighborhood Stabilization grants to "test new and innovative ways to prevent foreclosures."

But so far, Dodds said, those grants have been restricted to redeveloping foreclosed houses instead of preventing foreclosures.

He said local legislators are sending a letter asking Shaun Donovan, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), to use some of that $2 billion for the Courtroom 676 program.

Wearing her uniform and holding a "Save Our Homes" poster, Adrienne Hill-Smith, who has been a school crossing guard at 16th and Reed streets for 10 years, listened to Dodds intently.

She told the Daily News that she is threatened with losing her three-bedroom rowhouse on Dickinson Street near 22nd because her lender refused to modify payments on her $22,000 mortgage when job-related injuries cost her time at work last year.

"I hurt myself keeping children safe over the years," Hill-Smith said softly, explaining that her decade of work had taken a toll on both shoulders, requiring orthopedic surgeries last year.

In October, she lost her 35-year-old son, Chad, to pancreatic cancer. "I watched him go from a size 42 to a size 18 before he died," she said.

In November, her 32-year-old son Anton died of a brain aneurysm. Her 73-year-old mother died in December.

Throughout all this, Hill-Smith said, the lender called her repeatedly, demanding payment. "I finally told them, 'I'm sitting here with my son, watching him die. I can't argue with you right now.'"

Despite receiving help in Courtroom 676, Hill-Smith fears she'll lose her home. "I just need an angel," she said.

The city's foreclosure-prevention advocates - Common Pleas Judge Annette Rizzo, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, City Councilman Curtis Jones and Dodds - want to help Hill-Smith and thousands of other at-risk homeowners.

"If there is a term in the dictionary called 'she-ro,' her picture is close by it," Jones said of Rizzo, who explained that her successful mission to "keep homeowners in their homes, one address at a time" could be greatly expanded through federal funding.

Fattah and like-minded legislators are also asking HUD's Donovan to provide additional funding for the statewide Homeowner's Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program (HEMAP), which has made bridge loans to unemployed homeowners since 1983, but has been so cash-starved lately that it has focused instead on helping employed Pennsylvanians.

Fattah plans to introduce legislation in the upcoming congressional session that will "help homeowners who have been paying their bills until they lost their jobs" by providing HEMAP bridge loans for up to 36 months.

Fattah said that HEMAP borrowers are excellent credit risks because since the program began in 1982, it has received $211.4 million in state appropriations for loans and $237.7 million in loan repayments.