While the recent Banking Reform Bill was touted as a means to prevent future financial crises, a little-known amendment offers a helping hand to unemployed homeowners. With HAMP and other foreclosure relief efforts intended to help working homeowners, they offered little to the millions of unemployed who fail to qualify for a loan modification.
The new program will be administered by HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and while the details are yet to be announced, the bill includes as much as $1 billion to be used to help those without jobs make their monthly mortgage payments. And with unemployment remaining abnormally high, the funds will provide a “safety-net” to many homeowners who might otherwise be forced into foreclosure.
The current recession has been exceedingly difficult for millions across the country, and there are many who legitimately need the assistance offered. However, $1 billion isn’t much when spread across the millions of unemployed. I would hope that HUD does an effective job of distributing the funds and insures that money not go to dead people, those in prison, or those who do not own homes, as was recently the case with the Housing Tax Credit.
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