WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson plans to unveil on Thursday a plan being hammered out with the mortgage industry that's intended to slow the record number of homes falling into foreclosure and ease the damage from the housing recession.

Details of the plan would coincide with the release of data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Those figures are expected to show that homes in foreclosure hit records for April through June, especially for people with subprime credit and adjustable-rate loans. Nearly 17 percent of those subprime borrowers missed at least one payment in the first quarter of the year. An additional 2 million homeowners will face their first interest-rate reset by the end of 2008.

"This is the most serious housing recession since the Great Depression," says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's www.Economy.com. Zandi predicts that home prices, on average, will fall 7 percent more through next year.

Paulson met with housing and banking regulators, lenders, loan-servicing companies and Wall Street executives last week to seek "an aggressive, systematic approach to fast-track able borrowers into a refinance or mortgage modification," he said yesterday.

The plan, Paulson added, "does not, and will not, include spending taxpayer money on funding or subsidies for industry participants or homeowners."

Questions remain, though, about how many investors who bought bonds backed by these mortgages and are spread out around the globe will agree to change the terms of the loans.

Under the plan, borrowers will fall into four categories. Those who: