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A Queens Village woman pleaded with officials and residents outside of the Queens County Courthouse in Jamaica on Friday to help her save one of the only things she said she has left after the death of her son earlier this year in Iraq: her home.

Jocelyne Voltaire, 54, is facing the foreclosure of her home after getting involved in a mortgage scam last February with a company that offered her a new mortgage loan with a low 2.9 percent interest rate. She is one of several Queens Village residents who have received visits from loan officers in the past year. These mortgage lenders entice homeowners with low interest rates, but fail to make all of the details of their new contract transparent. Since February, Voltaire’s monthly payments have skyrocketed from $1,500 to $3,900. She said her bank put her house up for auction without warning and refused to communicate with her to find a solution to the problem.

“I’m not begging for welfare,” Voltaire said. “I worked all my life, my son died for this country, and now the bank wants to take my home away? That’s just wrong. Washington needs to help us, the homeowners, not the banks and Wall Street.”

The Haitian emigrant has resided in the white, two-story Queens Village house for 21 years. She has raised three children in her home, Mackenzie, 10, Rorwas, 16, and Wilbur Voltaire, a Navy officer who was 35 when he died this January serving in Iraq.

Voltaire worked at the Kings Harbor Nursing Home in the Bronx for 20 years but said she is no longer able to work because she suffers from diabetes and depression. This is her second mortgage. She refinanced her home once before in order to pay for her oldest son’s college tuition, she said.

When CODEPINK Women for Peace learned about Voltaire’s struggle, the grassroots organization got involved by creating a web site for people to donate to a fund to help pay Voltaire’s mortgage. As of Friday morning, the group collected $16,000, which helped convince her loan officer and the Queens County judge to halt the foreclosure until further plans could be made.

“At 11 a.m. today, her house would have been in foreclosure, if not for the generous donations we collected,” said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK. “She is one of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the country who have been victims of predatory lending. We’re determined to make sure Jocelyne stays in her home and that the government helps people like her, not rich financiers.”