NEW YORK (AP) - As home foreclosures mount, mortgage companies are knocking on doors, sending letters and making phone calls with a simple message for struggling homeowners: They’d rather modify your loan than foreclose.

EMC Mortgage Corp., specialist with a $78 billion portfolio of subprime loans - for homeowners with weak credit - this week launched a 50-person team it calls “the Mod Squad.” Members will spend an unlimited time on the phone with troubled borrowers, sifting through their bills to compute a workable monthly payment. In an industry that often rewards workers for getting off the phone quickly, the team is preparing to speak to just three people a day.

Overall mortgage application volume fell last week for the third week as interest rates rose sharply, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported today.

The market composite index, a measure of mortgage application volume, dropped 3.2 percent, falling to 649.5 last week on a seasonally adjusted basis from 671 one week earlier.

The index that tracks refinancings took the biggest hit as it dropped 4.5 percent last week from the week before, and the purchase index sank 2 percent.

Refinancings and adjustable loans continued to lose market share, with refis slipping to 44.5 percent of total applications and adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) down to 19.2 percent.

Civil rights groups Wednesday called for a six-month moratorium on foreclosures on homes purchased using “reckless and unaffordable” subprime loans, saying a disproportionate share of the harm done by those loans is falling on African-American and Latino homeowners and their neighborhoods.

At a Washington, D.C., press conference, the groups — including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and the National Council of La Raza — urged Congress to pass anti-predatory legislation, including a “private right of action,” that would give aggrieved borrowers more leeway to sue lenders for damages.