By: Trisha Ocona Francis
While tens of thousands of Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure every day and the unemployment rate still remains high, many middle-class American homeowners have asked the question, “Where is my bailout?” Well, our voices have not fallen on deaf ears. Thousands of homeowners will finally have access to the miracle aid they have been seeking.
One-billion dollars has been awarded to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Protection Act for the Emergency Homeowner’s Loan Program (EHLP). Through this program, eligible homeowners can receive assistance with both their delinquent and future mortgage payments for up to 24 consecutive months or up to $50,000. This should give the granted homeowners enough time and financial assistance to get back on their feet and avoid losing their homes. This homeowners’ loan will be granted at 0% interest and be forgivable, which means the balance will be automatically reduced by 20% every year for five years until the balance is clear.
Some of the requirements include: [consult with an EHLP Counselor for all EHLP eligibility requirements]
- Temporarily and involuntarily unemployed or underemployed due to the economy or a medical condition
- At least 90 days delinquent on mortgage, with a risk of foreclosure and have received a written notice from lender stating such
- Property must be owner’s primary residence
- Applicant must be the deed holder
- Property must be a single-family, multi-family up to four units, cooperative or condominium
- Have a good history or paying the mortgage payments before income reduction.
The enrollment period ends on Friday, July 22, 2011. To be sure that homeowners are eligible, HUD requests that you take the first step by submitting a Pre-Applicant Screening Worksheet to an EHLP counseling agency. This worksheet, along with a listing of counseling agencies in your area, can be found on the EHLP website www.ehlp.org or by calling 1.855.346.3345. HUD may establish a random lottery program to select applicants in the event that submissions are higher than anticipated. If selected, applicants will be required to meet with an EHLP counselor to submit supporting documents. Lottery selection does not guarantee EHLP assistance. Once ultimately approved and selected, a homeowner’s contribution amount is determined by HUD, which is 31% of your currency monthly income or $150 (whichever is more) and the EHLP will pay the remainder of your monthly mortgage payment.
EHLP is available to homeowners in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. It is also offered in Puerto Rico. If EHLP is unavailable in your state or you are not eligible to qualify, visit www.findaforeclosure counselor.org to contact a counselor to discuss your options and determine if your state has received funds through the U.S Treasury’s Hardest Hit Fund Program.
I know many of us will think of this as another attempt to help American homeowners who won’t do much at all. However, remember home is the place you and your family rest their heads at night—an investment that has consumed a lot of your time and energy. It can be taken away from you for reasons beyond your control. Think of the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed, and take another shot at saving what we call home.”
*PLEASE NOTE: Both the EHLP application process and the opportunity to receive assistance from an EHLP counseling agency is FREE. Anyone who requests a fee for this kind of assistance is being deceitful.
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Sheila Bair wrote an op-ed article in 2007 that made people in Treasury think, "Sheila Bair is difficult."
She was surprised to learn that mortgage servicers had pushed 99% of those surprise-reset mortgages (whose en masse defaults sparked the crisis) into foreclosure rather than modifying them. So she voiced her frustrations in an article.
According to the NYTimes:
[In an op-ed in the New York Times, she] called on mortgage servicers to reset adjustable-rate mortgages en masse. “These borrowers would still be required to make their monthly payments... Avoiding foreclosure would protect neighboring properties and hasten the recovery.”
Although she made no mention of the Treasury Department, everyone in the bureaucracy knew that it was her real target. It was now official: Sheila Bair was difficult.
That's one of two interesting things about the foreclosure process that we learned reading an interview with Bair in the NYTimes. Basically, that mortgage servicers "promised" (whatever that means, we don't find out. Obviously, it wasn't in writing.) to modify mortgages, but instead, they foreclosed on most properties and modified just 1%.
The second is that when explaining the rush-to-foreclosure process she says, “I think some of it was that they didn’t think borrowers were worth helping. There was some disdain for borrowers.”
Honest! And totally unproven because she doesn't go into detail. But it reminds us of the opposite of when Jamie Dimon said, "Giving debt relief to people who really need it. That's what foreclosure is."
It's a homeowner's worst nightmare: That banks rush to foreclose 99% of the time because (Bair suspects) bankers have a disdain for borrowers.
The entire "exit interview," which Bair gave to the NYTimes as she's leaving the FDIC for Pew Trusts, is a good read >
Two other interesting points:
1. She echoes the voice of the public when it comes to capital requirements (they should be higher to discourage risk-taking behavior) and the foreclosure process (banks should instead help homeowners modify the loans). She similarly seems to forget that politicians encouraged banks to loan to riskier candidates by throwing lawsuits at them if they disqualified borrowers with low income, and instead blames mostly the securitization process and banks' eagerness to make risky bets.
2. She also thinks that Bear Stearns should have failed, not given to Jamie Dimon as a Christmas present, like the book, Too Big To Fail put it.
Bair told Joe Nocera:
“Let’s face it.. Bear Stearns was a second-tier investment bank, with — what? — around $400 billion in assets? I’m a traditionalist. Banks and bank-holding companies are in the safety net. That’s why they have deposit insurance. Investment banks take higher risks, and they are supposed to be outside the safety net. If they make enough mistakes, they are supposed to fail. So, yes, I was amazed when they saved it. I couldn’t believe it. When they told me about it, I said: ‘Guess what: Investment banks fail.’ ”
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