Aid to the Unemployed Facing Foreclosure: Too Little, Too Late?
Unemployment drives foreclosure, and the two are jointly destroying middle-class wealth as the effects of the recession linger on. The Obama administration’s efforts to help such homeowners thus far have faltered, failing to put a dent in the wave of home losses. Two new programs are specifically designed to help unemployed people undergoing foreclosure. But for many, it might be too little, too late.
This week, the Home Affordable Modification Program — the administration’s flagship effort to help homeowners by letting them refinance for lower monthly mortgage payments and thereby avoid foreclosure — reported dismal numbers. In recent months, the program has kicked out far more homeowners than it has helped. It has completed only 346,000 modifications — though it initially set its sights on three million.
Just 120 HAMP modifications since March have included principal reduction, according to a report by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Office of Thrift Supervision released on Wednesday. Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said the HAMP program “risks being remembered not for catalyzing a recovery from our current housing crisis, but rather for bold announcements, modest goals and meager results.”
But this week, the Obama administration is moving on two little-noticed provisions that finally address the crisis of unemployed homeowners facing foreclosure and possibly enact more effective measures than mortgage modification. On Wednesday, President Obama gave final approval for the $1.5 billion Hardest Hit Fund, proposed this winter to help homeowners in the states most impacted by the unemployment and housing crises. The states — at first just California, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan and Florida — have already come up with “innovative” proposals to keep homeowners in homes using federal funds. Now, the federal government will give them hundreds of millions to enact them. The measures include cramdown, or principal reduction, cited as the most effective method to staunch foreclosure; and pools of money to help foreclosed families pay arrears. And some states will give unemployed homeowners low-interest loans to help make mortgage payments.
Read more @ http://washingtonindependent.com/88160/aid-to-the-unemployed-facing-foreclosure-too-little-too-late
As always,
Shawn