WASHINGTON — With fewer than 500 applications and only two dozen homeowners helped so far, House lawmakers moved yesterday to revamp a new program that was intended to help hundreds of thousands of borrowers avoid losing their homes.

The changes approved by the House Financial Services Committee come as Congress and President Obama refine the most dramatic steps yet to boost the ailing U.S. housing market. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is expected to announce a new approach for aiding borrowers and rescuing the flailing financial industry next week.

The Obama administration wants to spend up to $100 billion in financial bailout money to help borrowers stay in their homes.

The government's efforts to stem the foreclosure crisis so far have relied on voluntary cooperation of the lending industry. The plans have not stopped a dramatic surge in foreclosures that is likely to worsen as workers lose their jobs amid a deepening recession.

"We will have to do more — substantially more — to fix this crisis," Geithner said yesterday.

During the presidential campaign, Obama said banks that receive federal bailout money should be required to halt foreclosures for 90 days, but that hasn't happened yet.

Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman, said in an e-mail that Obama "is working very hard on a significant foreclosure prevention program that will be substantially more sweeping than the ideas put forward in the past."

Congress last year created the Hope for Homeowners program, which was supposed to allow 400,000 troubled homeowners swap risky loans for traditional 30-year fixed-rate loans with lower rates.

But only 25 loans have been approved since the program started in October out of 451 applications, despite more than 66,000 calls to the Federal Housing Administration about it from consumers and lenders.