Foreclosure Prevention Bill Doesn’t Prevent Foreclosures
A Foreclosure Prevention Bill That Doesn’t Prevent Foreclosures – by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at Care2 Election Blog)
It seems to me that a Foreclosure Prevention Bill that encourages home foreclosures, really isn’t so helpful. It also hurts families with homes that happen to be near a home that forecloses, because even people paying their mortgage on time will see their property values drop when there is a foreclosure in their neighborhood. What is needed is a bill that helps homeowners before they are foreclosed upon, by either helping with refinancing at a more affordable rate, or helping these homes get sold before foreclosure. A bill that gives incentives to people to buy a foreclosed home is hurting the people is should be helping, and it makes no sense.
From The Associated Press…
It’s touted as easing the foreclosure crisis and boosting demand for housing, but critics warn that a bill before the Senate might actually encourage foreclosures and drive down house values.
At issue is a proposal to award a $7,000 tax credit to people who buy foreclosed homes or homes on which foreclosure has been filed, one piece of a broader measure that awards tax breaks to homebuilders and banks yet offers little for families in foreclosure. It’s chiefly sponsored by Republicans, but it has gotten a chilly reception from the Bush administration, as well as Democrats in the House.
From Politics As Usual…
When Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans work together you get a housing bill that helps just about everyone BUT those losing their homes.
From Robert Reich’s Blog…
The housing bill emerging from the Senate is something Herbert Hoover would have been proud of. Like Hank Paulson’s much-touted plan for “overhauling” Wall Street by deregulating it, the Senate housing bill “helps” distressed homeowners by giving them lots of little things that won’t really help them at all. Lesson: The Fed (and, indirectly, taxpayers) can bail out investment banks but there’s no stomach for bailing out regular folk who got caught in the downdraft.
From OpenMarket…
The Washington Post today editorialized against the Senate housing bill, the so-called “Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008,” noting that it is actually ”A Pro-Foreclosure Bill” that contains “perverse incentives” that will “encourage foreclosures” while sticking the taxpayers with the tab. The bill is also “studded with economically questionable sops” to special interests, and contains subsidies for local government borrowing that have “proven notoriously inefficient.” We earlier criticized Congressional mortgage bailout proposals and subsidies to left-wing housing groups. The American public opposes mortgage bailouts.
From Prometheus 6…
WE’RE REALISTS. We know that legislation can involve a certain amount of moral and intellectual corner-cutting. But is it too much to ask that a bill called the “Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008″ not contain a provision that might, at the margin, encourage home foreclosures? Apparently so, because the bipartisan Senate housing relief package includes just such a measure.
What do you think of this?
