When the Obama administration launched its Making Home Affordable offensive in April against the foreclosure blitzkrieg, the plan played well in sound bites. The strategy was to help at-risk homeowners avoid eviction by refinancing or modifying their loans.

It seemed a sensible solution with one pretty big caveat: Its success would require cooperation from some of the same entities that fueled the foreclosure onslaught in the first place -- mortgage banks and brokers.

The program did help some folks fend off foreclosure. For too many others, though, it turned into just another doorway to homeowner hell -- a confusing, frustrating, bureaucratic nightmare of documents, delays and dead ends. Some worried property owners said it took up to three months to hear back from certain mortgage companies.

Last month, the Congressional Oversight Panel -- which monitors the fed's foreclosure tactics -- also raised concerns about the narrowness of the plan as the foreclosure crisis continues to spread. Cuyahoga County has identified 7,500 homeowners at risk of losing their homes. That's considered a conservative estimate.

Help is at hand, although far more needs to be done.

New guidelines require mortgage companies to respond to modification requests within 10 days, either with a decision or a request for more information, according to Mark McArdle, a senior policy analyst with the Treasury Department.

He told a recent Cleveland fair-lending conference that other positive (and obvious) changes also are being implemented. Among them: streamlining the paperwork and requiring mortgage companies to provide written reasons for rejecting homeowners and a toll-free number where they can get specific details on that decision.

As swell as all of that sounds, it doesn't address a bigger problem: Banks hate risk, and balk when it comes to certain applicants.

Mark Seifert says that of at least 400 loan modifications his local nonprofit foreclosure prevention group, Empowering and Strengthening Ohio's People, has done since mid-July, not one was approved for people on unemployment, even though the jobless are eligible.

Financial counseling also should be mandatory for participants. It isn't always predatory lending that's landed them in trouble.

The Making Home Affordable program is an essential weapon against the mortgage meltdown. Federal officials must do more to ensure that it is accessible and responsive.