Time and time again, the banking industry has told us it wants to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Yet lenders continue to make it more difficult for borrowers to get out of unaffordable mortgages.

The latest inexcusable example is provided by syndicated real estate columnist Kenneth Harney.

Over the past five years, hundreds of thousands of borrowers financed their homes with piggyback loans -- a primary mortgage, usually for about 80% of the purchase price, and a smaller, home-equity loan to cover the remaining 20%.

For years, banks happily agreed to keep second loans subordinated to a borrower's first mortgage when a homeowner with a solid payment history refinanced the primary loan.

But Harney says Cleveland-based National City will no longer approve second-mortgage subordination requests from customers who want a first mortgage from another lender.

He has a memo the bank distributed on Feb. 18 informing employees of the change; a National City spokesman declined to identify how many customers would be affected.

That will make it impossible for National City's home-equity customers to refinance their primary mortgages with anyone other than National City.

And on National City's terms.

Of course, borrowers who can't -- or won't -- refinance through National City become a bigger risk to default on their primary mortgages and their secondary mortgages from National City.

We can't see how this helps anyone, including National City, which lost more than half-a-billion dollars on mortgage lending last year.

It's also a pretty harsh decision for a bank whose home-equity division used to specialize in second mortgages and pushed that kind of financing on so many borrowers.

We can only hope other lenders don't follow National City's lead.

If you're in danger of losing your home, here's our best advice on how to avoid foreclosure.