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Presidents comments on homeownership assistance program:

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The rate of homeownership amongst minorities is below 50 percent. And that's not right, and this country needs to do something about it. We need to close the minority homeownership gap in America so more citizens get the satisfaction and mobility that comes from owning your own home, from owning a piece of the future of America.

The law I sign today will help us build on this progress in a very practical way. Many people are able to afford a monthly mortgage payment but are unable to make the downpayment, and so this legislation will authorize $200 million per year in downpayment grants to at least 40,000 low-income families. These funds will help American families achieve their goals and, at the same time, strengthen our communities.


This is just the kind of assistance minorities need, especially just before an election.
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Or it could be someone actually trying to help those less fortunate who actually do work for a living. Alot of folks today can't afford a huge down payment on a home, but could easily make monthly mortgage payments. I have nothing but praise for the President for signing something like this into law.
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Alot of folks today can't afford a huge down payment on a home, but could easily make monthly mortgage payments. I have nothing but praise for the President for signing something like this into law.


Housing prices and interest rates are extremely low right now, so it's not a big challenge to afford a monthly payment. However, if you can't afford the down payment, you shouldn't be buying a house. After a housing bubble like the one we just had, signing something like this into law is completely stupid and reckless.
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Or it could be someone actually trying to help those less fortunate who actually do work for a living. Alot of folks today can't afford a huge down payment on a home, but could easily make monthly mortgage payments. I have nothing but praise for the President for signing something like this into law.


You do know that dubya said this quote don't you?

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The rate of homeownership in America now stands a record high of 68.4 percent. Yet there is room for improvement. The rate of homeownership amongst minorities is below 50 percent. And that's not right, and this country needs to do something about it. We need to -- (applause.) We need to close the minority homeownership gap in America so more citizens have the satisfaction and mobility that comes from owning your own home, from owning a piece of the future of America.

Last year I set a goal to add 5.5 million new minority homeowners in America by the end of the decade. That is an attainable goal; that is an essential goal. And we're making progress toward that goal. In the past 18 months, more than 1 million minority families have become homeowners. (Applause.) And there's more that we can do to achieve the goal. The law I sign today will help us build on this progress in a very practical way.
http://www.americandreamdownpa...com/whsp12162003.cfm

It might have been kind of Bush to want to help minorities avoid the traps from predatory lenders, but it was too little, too late. Note this passage:
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And there's more to do, as well. We'll continue to pursue a broad agenda to help people own a home. There are three steps I want to describe to you right quickly about what we intend to do. First, those who apply for mortgages should be made aware of all the costs and warned about predatory lenders who take advantage of inexperienced buyers. So we've doubled the funds for housing counseling services, including those run by faith-based and community groups.


The program was still a failure because it tried to shortcut the way to the American Dream with another government program. It would have been better that the people it was intended to help had instead just saved the money for the down payment as people in the past have done.
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Bush could be exposing taxpayers to tens of billions of dollars of losses, luring thousands of low- and moderate-income people to the heartbreak of losing their first house, and risking wrecking entire neighborhoods. Bush’s housing initiatives – especially his “American Dream Down Payment Act” to give free down payments to selected home buyers – were key planks in his reelection campaign.
He is also pushing Congress to enact a law to permit the feds to give zero-down-payment mortgages. Bush’s freebie hype could make the millions of low- and moderate-income Americans who are saving and scrimping for a down payment feel like fools. Bush talks as if the federal government is obliged to relieve all Americans from the nuisance of ever having to accumulate any personal savings.

Down-payment handouts and zero-down-payments are a great political strategy for Bush. He gets the applause and the political credit now, and the defaults from the program may not surge until much later. He transfers the risk of homeownership from buyers to taxpayers and then pretends he has multiplied virtue in America. He preens as a great benefactor at the same time he undermines those virtues that he is claiming to multiply.



The work of a Rep President and a Rep Congress. How can we go wrong sending them back to DC??? That is why the Tea Party faithful are considered insane.
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The work of a Rep President and a Rep Congress. How can we go wrong sending them back to DC??? That is why the Tea Party faithful are considered insane.


I think that history would show that the legislation is bi-partisan.

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Enacted into Law: 12.16.2003
Senate: Yea-100, Nay-0
House: Yea-435, Nay-0
http://themiddleclass.org/bill...downpayment-act-2003

Also one should note that it was an attempt (although not a good one) to steer people away from the Clinton era designed regulations with sub-prime loans that sank the economy.

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The Housing Bubble’s Rosetta Stone

The National Homeownership Strategy (NHS) may have been the most comprehensive, pervasive, impactful and transformational public policy initiative in U.S. history. Yet only a small percentage of Americans have ever heard of it. Even fewer understand the NHS’ stated goal of record homeownership or are able to confirm whether those objectives were met.

Results from a recent AMD.com survey confirm this unfamiliarity: Link to Survey Results

The NHS was a massive, complex, coordinated undertaking.

The public policy initiative consisted of 100 distinct action items detailed within “The National Homeownership Strategy: Partners in the American Dream” released by HUD in May 1995. Specific examples of these action items include the following subject titles:

Action 11: Removing Barriers to Mortgage Financing for Starter Homes
Action 29: Alternative Approaches to Homebuying Transactions
Action 35: Home Mortgage Loan-to-Value Flexibility
Action 36: Subsidies to Reduce Downpayment and Mortgage Costs
Action 44: Flexible Mortgage Underwriting Criteria
Action 45: Public-Private Leveraging for Affordable Home Financing

The NHS’ integrated effort included alliances with influential public, private and non-profit entities. At the time of publication in 1995 there were 56 “National Partnerships” including the American Bankers Association, Appraisal Institute, Fannie Mae, Federal Home Loan Bank System, Freddie Mac, Mortgage Bankers Association of America, Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, National Association of Home Builders, National Association of Real Estate Brokers, National Foundation of Consumer Credit, National Urban League and HUD.

More broadly The National Homeownership Strategy encompassed parallel regulatory and legislative reforms during 1994 and 1995. Examples include:

* The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was revised to force lenders to make loans to uncreditworthy borrowers as a cost of doing business

* The Riegle-Neal Act was passed making compliance with The Community Reinvestment Act a prerequisite for banks to expand, make acquisitions or operate in more than one state

These initiatives transformed the purpose of bank regulators. Since The Great Depression the goal of bank regulation had been to ensure the solvency of lending institutions. After 1994 regulators were tasked also with implementing and enforcing the NHS’ social agenda. Extending loan access to the uncreditworthy was in direct opposition to bank solvency.

Under the NHS the considerable resources of the Federal Government were brought to bear on expanding homeownership. In 1994 HUD directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to proliferate subprime lending. These combined Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) act as a functional monopoly within the mortgage market. As such, they enjoyed substantial influence over lending standards, credit availability and the private-sector mortgage industry which was directly dependent upon the GSE’s for profitability. By 1996, HUD was directing Freddie and Fannie to provide at least 42% of their mortgage financing to low-income borrowers and 12% of their portfolios to “special affordable” loans.

http://theaffordablemortgagede...ership-strategy.aspx
Clinton had a Rep Congress, too.

The insanity started a long time ago, in a reality far, far, away.

If you want to blame OBama for not fixing the economy, which is not even possible, then there is no rational point of view that does not render BushIIe responsible for driving the economy into a Depression, which resulted in the loss of $6Trillion of wealth and the current jobless situation.

Go Team Republican!!!
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If you want to blame OBama for not fixing the economy, which is not even possible, then there is no rational point of view that does not render BushIIe responsible for driving the economy into a Depression, which resulted in the loss of $6Trillion of wealth and the current jobless situation.


I think that everyone is leaving out the real villains of the story. If the cretins who chose to live beyond their means and those sharks who put commissions over common sense didn't create those loans, whatever the fools in Congress and the Whitehouse created wouldn't matter.
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I think that everyone is leaving out the real villains of the story. If the cretins who chose to live beyond their means and those sharks who put commissions over common sense didn't create those loans, whatever the fools in Congress and the Whitehouse created wouldn't matter.


Everyone would like to live on more than they earn. Every business owner would like to make more profit. I can't blame people for acting in their own self-interest. Were their abuses? Of course. Still, these banks would not have taken the risk they did without The Fed to back them up. The private sector can't create that much credit out of thin air.
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Fannie and Freddie were major players in the catastrophe. They provided $6.5 trillion to the housing market, half the total. Without that huge amount, the housing prices wouldn't have skyrocketed, the market distorted, or taxpayers now on the hook for billions more to support them


The mortgage backed securities they sold certainly added fuel to the fire as well as scorching a few pension plans.

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