Since the residential foreclosure dilemma began swelling to crisis proportions three years ago, the numbers have simply grown more frightening as homeowners in New York State and across the country have become seriously delinquent in making their mortgage payments. The extent of the problem is unarguable. The numbers underscore it:

• Since the housing peak in 2006, nearly 6.5 million residential properties nationwide have been lost to foreclosure;

• Another 4.5 million homeowners, according to Moody's Analytics, are seriously delinquent, having fallen more than three months behind in their mortgage payments, and forming the cusp of a second wave.

Clearly, the second wave is welling. The alarm bells have sounded. The lasting impact is scary. While New York is far down the list of the states hardest hit by home foreclosures - far behind Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona - it nevertheless has its share of difficulties.

New York's response, to date, has been palpably meek, embracing little more than an affirmation requirement on foreclosure actions that, in sum, pales in comparison to the assembly-line foreclosure abuses disclosed thus far.

Given the prospect for even more toxic fallout from the foreclosure explosion, New York's so-called "affirmation requirement," and its attendant controversy, stands out as little more than jurisprudential scribbling in the face of the foreclosure tsunami.

The affirmation rule was trumpeted last fall by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman. It was heralded as the lead response of New York's legal system to the unfolding wrinkles of the mortgage foreclosure crisis, especially to the scandalous practices of some lenders in cutting corners to secure foreclosures.

On its face, the rule is simple enough: plaintiffs' (i.e., mortgage lenders) attorneys are now required to affirm in writing the foreclosure papers submitted to the courts. The thinking here was that such a requirement would cure the ills manifest in the robo-signing scandal, practices that included allegations of perjury by foreclosure processors who blindly signed paperwork without requisite knowledge.

In this vein, the reasoning appears to be that the attorney affirmation validates the integrity of the foreclosure papers, including the key nexus between lender and borrower/owner.

In practice, that reasoning has been knocked around like a legal pinata lately.

For example, in January, the Supreme Court in Kings County (Brooklyn) took the whip to rule violators. The case, Citibank NA v. Murillo, dismissed the foreclosure action on the basis of violating the affirmation rule, slamming the door "with prejudice." That was less than 90 days after Judge Lippman's announcement of the rule, apparently endowing the requirement with rapacious force.

But let's not forget: This is New York. Barely a month after Murillo, another Supreme Court ruling, LaSalle Bank v. Pace, knocked the props out from under the entire affirmation-rule platform. While in effect erasing the impact of the affirmation requirement on foreclosure actions, the Suffolk County decision also questioned whether the state Office of Court Administration and Judge Lippman had the authority to make such a rule affecting the legal relationship between borrower and lender. It concluded in the negative, focusing its attention on the arguable absence of authority for the courts to enter what the LaSalle decision views as legislative turf.

The decision paid scant attention to the welter of complaints over alleged improprieties in the chaotic foreclosure rush. It was unmoved by the grinding assembly-line approach to preparing legal papers. It apparently was unimpressed by the dust kicked up by the storm of assignments of interest that also marked the mortgage crisis.

What the two decisions will eventually yield in the way of a substantive resolution is uncertain. On the one hand, the affirmation requirement, on its own, amounts to a holding action that allows offending lenders/foreclosure plaintiffs the opportunity to re-assemble their papers and, the next time around, have them affirmed. It's quite a leap from this limited, temporary remedy to the strike-three tenor suggested by the Murillo decision.

The ultimate resolution will eek out of the appeals process. But given the impending second wave, there is more at stake. There's the matter of foreclosure sales. The Associated Press reported that they accounted for 28 percent of home sales in the first quarter of 2011. That's six times the norm. That's a lot of residential properties with potentially unclear title tracks.

Then there's the ongoing investigations of lenders by states and federal agencies. Some investigations are leaping beyond the shaky preparation of foreclosure papers into potential future problems such as "foreclosure blight." Lenders, whose names suddenly appear in title on foreclosed properties, are denying ownership and in the process doing little to maintain properties. In Los Angeles, the resulting pockets of blight have sparked an investigation of some of the largest banks, including HSBC.

Given these harbingers of future difficulties, the New York affirmation rule may well amount to much ado about yesterday's problem.

Modesto Argenio is of counsel at The Stamm Law Firm. He recently retired as senior court attorney, legal department, Erie County Surrogate's Court.