HOPE for Homeowners Saves 1 Home – 1 Home???
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Wow! That is the word for this epic failure. The 300 billion dollar Hope For Homeowners program the government touted as being the savior for 400,000 families has their results in.
They saved 1 homeowner out of the 752 applications,
1 homeowner saved.
Now what does that tell you?
- That the government is clueless on helping the individual? or
- That the people recognize that the government is clueless and only 752 people applied?
What a classic train wreck.
In the five months since it has been in effect, HOPE has helped exactly one homeowner to avoid foreclosure. This despite Congress having made $300 billion available to back these loans and estimating that the program would benefit as many as 400,000 families.
“As it stands now, we’ve only gotten 752 applications,” said Federal Housing Authority spokesman Brian Sullivan. “And only insured one loan. Needless to say, the program isn’t working terribly well.”
Rep. Michael Castle (R – Del.), who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, agreed, calling HOPE “one of the most failed programs we’ve had in a long time.” via CNN Money.
But folks, don’t worry. It is a government program so instead of scrapping it and putting the 300 billion back into the general fund Congress is going to overhaul the program.
Maybe they can save 2 people this time for a couple of billion in wasted overhead…
Hattip to Tom Vanderwall for finding this article via Twitter
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Comment by Woodstock real estate on 26 March 2009:
Tom thanks for bringing light to this. When this garbage bailout/stimulus/or whatever was drafted in Congress we laughed at it. People were wondering why we were laughing…………
Comment by Portland Real Estate on 27 March 2009:
Wow. That makes me really sad. How could a program fail that miserably? Oh, thats right, Republicans aren’t out to rescue the little guy, they LOVE big projects. Why don’t we just not tax the oil companies again, that seems to have worked well for us for the last few decades……
Comment by Mark Madsen on 29 March 2009:
Good job, Tom. I was actually just preparing an article today about the hope program, so this is perfect timing. I’m still having a hard time believing that only 1 home was saved. So glad that I didn’t spend the past 5 months thinking that I’d be able to make money in that niche.
Comment by Cam on 28 February 2010:
Actually Tom, unless I am the 1 homeowner it saved, it would be 2. I got $65,000 forgiven from my $150,000 subprime mortgage. I wasn’t going into forclosure and actually didn’t even know I had a subprime house, but I was just diagnosed with 3 horrible auto-immune disorders and my health was going downhill. I had to quit my second job and if I hadn’t had my monthly mortgage cut by $1000, my family and I would have not been able to pay our $1700 a month bill. Our mortgage got converted to a FHA (HUD) and went from a 40 yr fixed at 10% to a 30 yr fixed 5% loan. The interesting thing is I never called them to ask for it, they called me, out of the blue, like I’d won the lottery. I give God the credit though, not the government.