Another Federal Foreclosure Prevention Effort Fails - Daniel Indiviglio - Business - The Atlantic

 Another failure by the Obama administration....

For some reason, the government just can't seem to figure out how to aid struggling homeowners. First, its Making Homes Affordable program -- meant to prevent several million foreclosures -- continues to struggle to reach even one million. Then, its long-awaited principal reduction effort was completely shunned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which significantly limited its potential effectiveness. Another mortgage-aid effort ends Friday, which intended to help 30,000 underemployed Americans avoid foreclosure. Instead, it may not reach even 15,000. What went wrong this time? 

The "Emergency Homeowners' Loan Program" was a little different from some of the efforts that preceded it. It wasn't designed to prevent foreclosures for any homeowner facing foreclosure. It was specifically aimed at underemployed Americans -- those who are struggling to keep their homes because they lost their jobs or are forced to work part time. It provides interest-free loans of up to $50,000 to pay mortgage debt for up to two years. The program was provided $1 billion in funding from last July's financial regulation bill. It will probably leave about half unspent. 

A Few Months Work?

Cara Buckley at the New York Times reports on the problems that plagued the program. One issue was timing. Remember, the bill that gave birth to the program was passed in July 2010. Buckley says that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) dragged its feet:

Yet the department did not begin the program until this June, and set an original application cutoff date of late July. Across the country, nonprofit housing groups and mortgage counselors who had been chosen to work with applicants rushed to meet the deadline, which ended up being extended several times.

So the program would run for... two months? Is it even possible to spend $1 billion in such a short time period? It must have been like a scene out of Brewster's Millions at HUD this summer. Although, if anyone is good at spending oodles of money, it's the government. Maybe HUD should have recruited some Solyndra execs to help spend so much in such a short time. 

But kidding aside, it took HUD about a year to ramp up this program. That's an incredibly long period of time to put a program into effect with the word "emergency" in its title. Over the period, thousands of potential participants who were unemployed likely lost their homes through foreclosure. This delay is absurd.

Of course, we could also place a little bit of blame on the shoulders of Congress here. Why it force the program to end in September? In retrospect, a more sensible timeline might have been to give HUD one year from the time the program began to spend the money.

 
Another Federal Foreclosure Prevention Effort Fails - Daniel Indiviglio - Business - The Atlantic