Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Housing Crisis: Paying Homeowners to Leave

How many Flintoids will line up to take advantage of this? David Streitfeld of The New York Times reports:

In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave.

This latest program, which will allow owners to sell for less than they owe and will give them a little cash to speed them on their way, is one of the administration’s most aggressive attempts to grapple with a problem that has defied solutions.

More than five million households are behind on their mortgages and risk foreclosure. The government’s $75 billion mortgage modification plan has helped only a small slice of them. Consumer advocates, economists and even some banking industry representatives say much more needs to be done.



3 comments:

  1. I am SO TIRED of all of the bailouts to institutions deemed 'to big to fail'. AIG, GM Chrysler, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, and now the aggregate 'underwater homeowner'. It is the US government continuing the deficit spending that the private sector started in the mid-1980's. This is new deficit spending to underwrite failing private institutions atop the existing deficit spending for public concerns that our government has pursued since day 1 of Bush 2.

    Stand by for higher energy costs, higher food costs, higher interest rates, and much slower growth. That is our future for the next 15 years.

    IMHO, let private istitiutions fail, and let unbridled capitalism run. This is the way it's SUPPOSED to work.

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  2. ...but little to no regulations got us in a lot of this mess...

    ReplyDelete
  3. J.L.

    This 'mess' would fall hardest on the AIG's, Bank of America's, etc I we would only let it. Instead the public is underwriting all that debt through our TARP program, stock purchases (GM, Chrysler) and mortgage underwriting (Fannie/Freddie).

    I agree that no regulation/lack of regulation allowed the financial businesses to run wild. I object to the US Gov't now stepping in to prevent them from failing.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.