Posted on 10/14/2013 3:44:16 PM PDT by Libloather
A sign advertising low-interest housing loans at the Crescent Shores Subdivision in Lincoln, Delaware. The government shut-down has halted the processing of these loans, which are aimed at low- and moderate-income buyers.
The week-old federal government shutdown is a disaster on many levels. For rural America, one major impact is in the area of housing.
For the near future, low- and moderate-income homebuyers who have applied for mortgages guaranteed or made directly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Housing Service are out of luck. So are very low-income homeowners seeking repair grants or loans.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailyyonder.com ...
Now if the USDA would just cease operations entirely and permanently, the world would be a better place.
Teachable moment.
Dependency on government is slavery.
BOEHNER DID! MSM DID! And just about every damn leader in the GOP.
They are trying the same thing twice expecting a different result.
They also knew it would be violently unpopular which is why nobody in
the MSM released the information.
BOEHNER DID! MSM DID! And just about every damn leader in the GOP.
They are trying the same thing twice expecting a different result.
They also knew it would be violently unpopular which is why nobody in
the MSM released the information.
Good news just keeps coming. The USDA has no business in the mortgage industry. Another bastard child of omnibus spending bills...
Ha! Try telling that to the EBT card holders, across the fruited plains.
Maybe this message should be *left* next to all of the EBT swipe pads in all grocery stores. Just not in cursive.
Well cry me a river... LOW interest loans? The normal rate is already low. Less than 4%.
Just more distribution of wealth. It’s crap to begin with and the taxpayer shouldn’t be paying the bill for it.
Now owns a nice 2 bedroom home,she did good,she's a hard worker.
I told her she could do it,and she did.
Holy duplication of effort, Batman, why isn’t this program transferred to HUD? Better yet, why do it at all?
Do you actually support the federal gov’t giving out loans to purchase homes with nothing down?
I support being a homeowner over living in a section 8 rental.
It really is incredible that that type of activity is occurring 5 years after the start of the Great Recession even though it is exactly what led to the housing bubble that caused the Great Recession.
really?
Ancient history. In the early decades of the last century, farmers and more broadly rural America as a whole had serious banking and credit deficits. Even if your local country bank was competently managed and well capitalized, there was no competition and borrowers were at the mercy of often inadequate local lending institutions. By the 1930's, 40% of the nation's population was still rural, 25% was still on the farm, and rural incomes were less than half the national average. The inadequacy of rural credit system was fingered as a major obstacle to economic development. So, by fits and starts, a series of federal initiatives morphed into what became the Farmers Home Administration, which in the 1990's split into USDA Rural Development (rural utilities, home and business lending) and the Farm Services Agency (farm lending).
Critics will say that this is all anachronistic and that the legacy, ex FmHA programs should be terminated, given modern communications and internet access to a sophisticated banking and credit system. But nothing is quite that simple in government.
While Farmers Home and its successor agencies were quietly doing their thing in rural America, the federal government got into the urban housing and business incubator business in a big way via HUD, the Small Business Administration, and host of other agencies, largely located in Commerce. Since Farmers Home was already doing the rural piece, a rough division of labor ensured. HUD would concentrate on the bigger cities. USDA, which lives, eats, and breathes rural, would do the small towns and big empty spaces.
This offends some flow chart people, but it actually makes some sense. HUD and Commerce want to play in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, etc.; they don't want to be bothered with communities of 234 people 300 miles from the nearest commercial airport. This is why USDA does rural housing, rural water, sewer, and electric infrastructure, and rural business development.
Reformers sometimes come along and argue for a consolidation of these programs under one roof. The counterargument is that size matters. Say you are providing support for modern water and sewer systems in low income communities. (These programs are pretty generally means-tested.) You cannot take an unincorporated rural community of 83 people with a volunteer town board and no one in town who even knows what the federal register is, and toss it into loan/grant competition with mega-counties like Fairfax/Orange/Westchester, or cities like Boston/Chicago/San Antonio/Tucson, and say it's a fair competition. USDA does rural. USDA likes small communities. And USDA is trained and organized to work with local officials in communities that don't have battalions of professional planners and grantwriters on staff.
So there will be fewer debt slaves. That’s only a problem for the slavers.
Really
Yes. Section 8 housing has never lead to a housing bubble. On the other hand, giving out loans with nothing down so that the homeowner has no skin in the game is literally the exact same behavior that led to the Great Recession.
This isn't some obscure fact. It is well-known that unrestrained lending (pushed by the feds) led to the housing bubble. Even Barney Frank has acknowledged it. The fact that we are engaging in the exact same behavior again and putative conservatives are applauding it because it leads to home ownership is deeply disturbing.
This is Washington’s way of extending its reach into the red states — the outlying suburbs, countryside, farmland turned into housing.
There should be no SBA loans - none. There should be no USDA mortgages - none. There should be no FannieMae or FreddieMac mortgages - none. There should be no federal Department of Education - none. There are a whole lot of other programs, departments, and agencies that should be shut down completely - defunded with no spending bill or CD from the House. We need to get the feds out of areas that are none of their business.
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