Issue Position: Fighting Foreclosures
Issue Position
Issue Position: Fighting Foreclosures
Foreclosures hurt everyone not just homeowners who can lose their homes and suffer from tarnished credit reports. Foreclosures often lead to vacant and abandoned houses and surrounding neighborhoods and local municipalities suffer significant, negative consequences as a result. These include falling property values of surrounding houses, loss of equity held by neighbors, increase in crime, increased police and fire costs (due to vandalism and arson), increased demolition and building inspection costs, and a direct loss of property tax revenues.
Nationally, foreclosures continue to climbup 7 percent in May 2008 from April and up 48 percent from May 3, 2007. Ohio continues to rank among the top 10 states in terms of numbers of foreclosuresthere were 12,295 foreclosure filings in Ohio as of May 2008. This translates to one filing for every 410 households. Unlike the rest of the nation, the State of Ohio has contended with rising foreclosure rates since 1995. In 2007, foreclosure filings in Ohio increased in 73 out of 88 counties, with 39 counties experiencing double-digit increases.
To help combat the foreclosure crisis, the U.S. House recently passed a two-part housing package. The first part includes loans and grants for states to help keep families in their homes (HR 5818 ). The second part is a voluntary program that would permit Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to provide up to $300 billion in new guarantees to help refinance 1.5 million at-risk borrowers (HR 5830 ). These two bills passed the House on May 8th as part of a larger housing packageH.R. 3221 that also included FHA Modernization (HR 1852 ) and reform of Government Sponsored Enterprises ("GSEs") Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (HR 1427 ). In addition, the House passed the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act (HR 3915 ), a bill that sets new standards for new mortgages and provides protections for renters and borrowers going forward.
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