A Lot More
Observations on housing's wreckage and recovery
More (from me) on the homeowner bailout
I just wrote a story for Salon about California’s booming loan modification industry — a cadre of mortgage brokers, many of whom sold toxic mortgages during the boom, now reinventing themselves as mortgage bailout heroes, helping homeowners avoid foreclosure. The new Obama administration loan modification program helps guarantee them a steady stream of business, since there’s nothing in Treasury’s new “Homeowner Affordability and Sustainability Plan” to preclude borrowers from turning to one of these companies to help process the deal.
And who the heck came up with “Homeowner Affordability and Sustainability Plan”? It’s not even grammatically correct. Is Treasury promising to make homeowners affordable and sustainable? If I write a check for $10,000 will a homeowner (current? former?) show up on my doorstep?
How the homes we live in turned into the monsters that ate our economy and the United States became a nation obsessed with real estate.
The Latest
Organizations that matter
- Affordable Housing Centers of America
- Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
- Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program
- Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
- Center for Responsible Lending
- Demos
- Drum Major Institute
- Joint Center for Housing Studies
- Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
- National Consumer Law Center
- National Housing Institute
- National Housing Trust
- National Low Income Housing Coalition
- National Training and Information Center
- Natn’l Community Reinvestment Coalition
- NEDAP
- New America Foundation
- PolicyLink
- Pratt Center for Community Development
- Revson Fellowship
- Smart Growth America
What Alyssa reads
- Baseline Scenario
- Ben Smith
- Bloomberg News
- Calculated Risk
- City Limits
- Consumer Law and Policy Blog
- Doug Henwood
- Felix Salmon
- Galleycat
- Housing Wire
- Mother Jones
- Next American City
- Paul Krugman
- PolicyCents
- Ryan Avent
- Shelterforce
- Street Level
- Talking Points Memo
- The Audit
- The Balance Sheet
- The Big Picture
Tags
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