It started off a bit strange. I was at a some sort of business conference with a friend. He was trying to buy a portfolio of mortgages. He worked the crowd trying to find the seller and the information he needed. Finally, he found it and passed it off to me. It was in a spreadsheet on a thumbdrive. Years ago, I used to look at spreadsheets like this, so I plugged the thumbdrive into my laptop and started analyzing the mortgages.

Most of them looked pretty straight forward, but, as is often the case, and I suspect even more frequently these days, there were some 'underperforming mortgages', that is mortgages behind in payments and likely to default.

I looked a little more closely. These were mortgages of people and businesses in my community. It was then that the idea struck me. We should sell these mortgages to a local ice cream shop. They would use some of the profits from ice cream sales to pay down and retire the under performing mortgages. Since they would be the mortgage holders, it would help out with their investments as well. Sort of like Kiva meets Newman's Own at Ashley's Ice Cream shop.

It all made perfect sense. Now, all I needed to do was to speak with a few friends from a previous life of mine as a technologist working with mortgages on Wall Street with some of my new friends working at community health centers. The idea would be a little bit outside of the core competencies of each group of friends, but together they cut put together a good team of people to make this happen.

Then, the cat jumped on the bed. I rolled over and saw that it was 5:17 AM. It was warm under the covers, but I knew I needed to get up and take care of the animals. Nonetheless, the idea from the dream stuck with me. Could we create an Ice Cream Community Reinvestment Foundation? I figured the best approach would be to write down the dream and send an email to some friends for their thoughts. If the idea does manage to stand up on its own, it is likely to change shape a bit, but that is where my friends can help out the most. What doe you think? Can ice cream help solve the mortgage crisis?