Our Awful Situation

Archive for the ‘HUD’ Category

Here Comes the Next Mortgage Crisis

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 18th, 2008

Subprime was just the beginning. Wait until California’s prime borrowers start handing their keys to the bank:

California is to mortgage lending what Chicago is to pork bellies. For years, that meant it was a place with soaring house values; today, the foreclosure rate across the state is twice the national average and going up fast. Riverside County, outside Los Angeles, may be the foreclosure capital of the country, with a rate close to six times the national average. And housing prices are in freefall.

California should be the poster child for a mortgage-loan bailout. In few other places have so many taken on such onerous debts with so little equity. Unfortunately, the crisis in California is going to get much worse, and there is no bailout that will solve it. Why? Because if the first stage of the foreclosure crisis was about people who could not afford their mortgages, the next stage will be about people who have every reason not even to try to pay their mortgages.

HUD chief inattentive to crisis, critics say

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 13th, 2008

Another Bush bozo out the door due to scandal:

In late 2006, as economists warned of an imminent housing market collapse, housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson repeatedly insisted that the mounting wave of mortgage failures was a short-term “correction.”

He pushed for legislation that would make it easier for federally backed lenders to make mortgage loans to risky borrowers who put less money down. He issued a rule that was criticized by law enforcement authorities because it could increase the difficulty of detecting and proving mortgage fraud.

As Jackson leaves office this week, much of the attention on his tenure has been focused on investigations into whether his agency directed housing contracts to his friends and political allies. But critics say an equally significant legacy of his four years as the nation’s top housing officer was gross inattention to the looming housing crisis.

They contend that Jackson ignored warnings from within his agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, whose inspector general told Congress that some of the secretary’s efforts were “ill-advised policy” and likely to put more families at risk of losing their homes.

During Jackson’s years on the job, foreclosures for loans insured by HUD’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA) have risen and default rates have hit a record high.

All the while, Jackson enjoyed a chef and a full-time security detail that trailed him to Washington social events. His office launched a new $7 million auditorium and cafeteria at HUD’s headquarters, money that some within the agency believed should have been directed toward housing for the poor. His office solicited an emergency bid to obtain oil portraits of Jackson and four other HUD secretaries at a cost to taxpayers of $100,000.

While Rome burned…

HUD chief allegedly plans to resign

Posted by patriot on March 30th, 2008

MSNBC reports:

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson, buffeted by allegations of cronyism and favoritism, is expected to announce his resignation Monday, sources close to the matter told the Wall Street Journal.

Jackson was to appear at a press conference Monday morning, according to the Journal. Asked if Jackson was planning to resign, HUD spokeswoman DJ Nordquist told the paper in an e-mailed statement that she was “not at liberty to say what the announcement is.”

How many resignations are we at now for the Bush administration?

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