TALLAHASSEE - Travis Munnerlyn just wanted to add on to his Orlando home to make room for grandchildren coming to live with him and his wife. A couple years later, Munnerlyn cannot make the increasing payments on his adjustable rate loan - not even close - and could lose the house.

"Right now we're seven payments behind," Munnerlyn, 60, a security guard, said Wednesday. "There's one due today and I don't have it."

New mortgage foreclosure data show that he is in the same boat as a startlingly large number of Floridians. There's one foreclosure filing for every 95 Florida households, and the state had the second largest number of foreclosures in the country last year. In some areas of the state, foreclosures outnumber home sales.

This week, Democratic lawmakers filed legislation they hope will help people like Munnerlyn deal with subprime and other high cost mortgages they cannot pay.

On Wednesday, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and Democratic state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink joined forces in creating a task force to look at what the state might be able to do about what many say is a crisis that's going to get worse before it gets better.

"In the past, home foreclosures were most often associated with significant catastrophic events in a family, such as death or a divorce or a job loss or a health issue," said Sink, a former bank president. "Today, we're seeing foreclosures that are driven by these mortgages, which are made to consumers where their debt is actually increasing over time rather than decreasing."

Legislation filed this week by Sen. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, and Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, is aimed at protecting consumers from what they say is an increasing problem: fly-by-night mortgage brokers who dupe people into home loans they soon won't be able to afford.

The measure (HB 979) would prohibit balloon payments - where monthly mortgage payments suddenly double - and require that lenders more carefully verify that borrowers will be able to make loan payments, even after they increase.

It also would lower the threshold for what qualifies as a subprime loan, making more consumer protection available to borrowers.

The measure also would require more disclosure of what it would take to refinance the loan - something advocates for borrowers say is a commonly misunderstood. Many borrowers are told not to worry about increasing interest because they can refinance again before the higher rates take effect.

That's what Munnerlyn's mortgage broker told him he could do when he refinanced his house to do the addition.

Only it didn't work out that way. Munnerlyn's income took a dip when his wife was laid off and he might not have been able to refinance anyway even if she hadn't been. Only nobody explained that to him.

Now his payment is $2,500 a month on a 3-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot home, and he's wallowing in late fees and his credit is ruined.

"I can't buy a box of matches on credit," said Munnerlyn, who was at the Capitol on Wednesday to advocate for the bill. "It ruins people."

It's not clear how much support the Democratic legislation will garner in the strongly pro-business Republican Legislature. Crist said he had not seen the bill and couldn't comment on it.

The task force named by Crist and Sink won't have recommendations on how to deal with the issue until April. Among issues it may consider is extending the grace period for people evicted to find a new home.

"Our goal is to help people, to help them avoid the financial devastation and family disruption caused by losing a home," Crist said.

The governor said a key goal for the task force would also be to find ways to make borrowers better consumers.

Both Crist and Sink stopped short of saying the state should put a moratorium on foreclosures, something some have proposed nationally. Under a new agreement announced earlier this month, six of the country's largest financial institutions said they will give homeowners who are 90 or more days overdue on mortgage payments a one-month hold on the foreclosure process to try to find ways to afford the mortgage.