CHICAGO — Standing on the front stoop of neighborhood homes, Betty Gutierrez sees her community from a different vantage point than she has in the 25 years she has lived in West Lawn, Ill.

She doesn’t know the homeowners on the other side of the door. What she does know is they are behind on their mortgage payments and in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. That affects them but also Gutierrez, so she’s volunteered to help stabilize the neighborhood.

Armed with the names of delinquent borrowers from Bank of America, Gutierrez and 48 other volunteers are doing the work that banks and housing counselors can’t: personally calling on troubled homeowners and encouraging them to seek trial loan modifications and fill out the paperwork.

“You walk up those stairs, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Gutierrez said. “It has taken us totally out of our comfort zone. You see your neighborhood through a whole different prism. You see a neighborhood in deterioration.”

Throughout the country, community groups, governmental agencies and lenders have sent out mass mailings and conducted “fix your mortgage” events in school gyms, buses and exhibition halls.

However, it’s been hard for some communities to get out from under the crushing weight of foreclosures. Lenders, loan servicers and housing counselors don’t have the resources to adequately counsel the estimated 3.2 million delinquent borrowers nationally that may be eligible for a mortgage modification under the federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.

In an experiment under way on Chicago’s Southwest Side, Bank of America is using local homeowners, who have their own property home values at stake, to encourage delinquent borrowers to pursue loan modifications. If successful, the effort that began recently in four select ZIP codes could be expanded to other communities by the bank, which nationally has more than 990,000 delinquent mortgages that could be eligible for modification.

“If this is a success with Bank of America, we have a lever to go to other banks and say: ‘Don’t even start with’ ‘This can’t be done, ..’ ” said David McDowell, of the Southwest Organizing Project, one of the community groups involved.

The project is an outgrowth of a meeting in July between 200 Southwest Side community residents and Bank of America. For the first nine months of the year, lenders initiated foreclosure on 1,852 homes in four ZIP codes. Bank of America was behind 191 of those filings.

A promise from the bank to fast-track trial mortgage-loan-modification applications was one outgrowth of that meeting.

Neighborhood volunteers who passed criminal background checks are now working through the list, making phone calls and knocking on doors to see if homeowners received the letter and encouraging them to apply for a modification. They introduce themselves as neighborhood residents, church members or school parent volunteers, making it clear they don’t work for the bank.

“In the beginning, they look at you like, ‘Who are you?’ ” said Adriana Mejia, a program volunteer. “Then they open the doors. They’ve even offered me coffee.”

The grass-roots effort is “doing work that we as a bank can’t do,” said Robert Grossinger, a Bank of America senior vice president. “The people who are most likely to be able to make contact with a homeowner who is embarrassed about their situation is someone who lives in the community.”

Robert Navarro shares something else with the people he’s visiting: a fear of losing his home. Bank of America has begun foreclosure proceedings against his home, and the father of seven is waiting to see if his modification application is approved.

In the first week of the program, the bank received 16 new applications for loan modifications from residents.