Free Republic

Rocker John Mellencamp's two teenage sons face battery charges for allegedly punching and kicking a man during a fight that left the victim with serious facial injuries. On Thursday, prosecutors in Monroe County, Ind., charged 19-year-old Hud Mellencamp of Nashville, Ind., and 18-year-old Speck Mellencamp, of Bloomington, with one count each of battery resulting in serious bodily injury. Ty A. Smith, 19, of Bloomington, Ind., faces the same charge in the early morning July 29 attack.

According to Goldman Sachs, a whopping 60% of home purchases are made with cash. GS housing cash That would partially explain the doggedly (as in 1996) levels of mortgage purchase applications. mbaplt081413 Clearly, Fed policies to stimulate the housing market have not overly successful given the dormant purchase application levels. Even mortgage refi applications have run out of steam. mbarefi081413 CoreLogic reports that in-the-money borrowers are dwindling in number. clinthemoney Most middle- and lower-class households don’t have cash on hand to purchase a home, particularly in higher-cost urban areas … like Los Angeles. Foreign investors from China, Europe, Latin America...

Fannie and Freddie have been in operation for decades without problems until recently. Fannie began in 1938 as a quasi-governmental agency making affordable homes available to people by making the financing easier and funds more readily available by establishing a secondary market for mortgages. Previously banks had held onto their mortgages in a system called portfolio mortgages and were made mostly to their own account holders. With the homes as collateral, the banks then lent out that same money again to other local borrowers. If you remember the scene from It's a Wonderful Life when there is a run on...

Move would allow Obama administration to institute policies that would better integrate communities The Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed a new plan to change U.S. neighborhoods it says are racially imbalanced or are too tilted toward rich or poor, arguing the country's housing policies have not been effective at creating the kind of integrated communities the agency had hoped for. The proposed federal rule, called "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing," is currently under a 60-day public comment period. Though details of how the policy would specifically work are unclear, the rule says HUD would provide states, local governments...

There is an old program called "Section 8" housing where the US taxpayer gives welfare folks a voucher to rent houses or apartments. In many states (and everywhere, if Obama's HUD prevails), landlords have to accept Section 8 tenants or they get sued or even criminally prosecuted. The link is a video showing what happened to a lovely restored home whose landlord was forced to accept a Section 8 tenant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAzDaKsBUk0

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed a new plan to change U.S. neighborhoods it says are racially imbalanced or are too tilted toward rich or poor, arguing the country's housing policies have not been effective at creating the kind of integrated communities the agency had hoped for. The proposed federal rule, called "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing," is currently under a 60-day public comment period. Though details of how the policy would specifically work are unclear, the rule says HUD would provide states, local governments and others who receive agency money with data and a geospatial tool to...

In a move some claim is tantamount to social engineering, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is imposing a new rule that would allow the feds to track diversity in America’s neighborhoods and then push policies to change those it deems discriminatory. The policy is called, "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing." It will require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in every single neighborhood and try to remedy it. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan unveiled the federal rule at the NAACP convention in July. "Unfortunately, in too many of our hardest hit communities, no matter how hard a child...

It seems our government will never learn their lesson. For decades, we have seen the political leaders and bureaucrats in Washington push for fair housing practices. They used the Community Reinvestment Act to do this and with each liberal President we elected, the push was intensified. Thus, we saw the housing market plunge off a cliff because so many people who couldn't afford a mortgage received one, nonetheless. Some bankers were afraid to refuse loans because of threats by groups such as ACORN. This push was the beginning of the trend that helped steer our economy into the worst recession...

In a move some claim is tantamount to social engineering, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is imposing a new rule that would allow the feds to track diversity in America’s neighborhoods and then push policies to change those it deems discriminatory. The policy is called, "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing." It will require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in every single neighborhood and try to remedy it. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan unveiled the federal rule at the NAACP convention in July. "Unfortunately, in too many of our hardest hit communities, no matter how hard a child...

The consensus response to President Obama’s Knox College speech on the economy is that the administration has been reduced to pushing a menu of stale and timid policies that, in any case, won’t be enacted. But what if the administration isn’t actually out of ideas? What if Obama’s boldest policy initiative is merely something he’d rather not discuss? And what if that initiative is being enacted right now? A year ago, I published Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. There I described the president’s second-term plan to press a transformative “regionalist” agenda...

How? Just move people from low income neighborhoods into middle class neighborhoods. This brilliant stratagem is being promoted by Shaun Donovan, Obama's newly appointed head of HUD. According to Donovan, the middle class is the middle class because they have all the advantages of living in middle class neighborhoods. After all, middle class neighborhoods have better "schools, jobs, transportation, and other important neighborhood resources that can play a role in helping people move into the middle class." Move people from low income neighborhoods with poor "assets" into neighborhoods with good "assets" and presto they will have middle class jobs and...

Barack Obama’s latest plan to reshape America will involve punishing white communities for their lack of inclusion. Already the Obama Administration has doled out “damages” to 25,000 Americans in the last three years in housing reparation payments. It’s like Pigford on steroids. FOX NEWS VIDEO America Live reported:Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in a July 16 speech to the NAACP about a new regulation and database aimed at adding “protected classes” into predominantly white neighborhoods. The federal government is getting serious about pushing racial and ethnic diversity into America’s neighborhoods–and is using big data and big money...

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan gave an interesting speech at the NAACP meeting in Orlando on July 16th. To be sure, inner city poverty is a serious problem. The public policy question is how to best address this problem. But HUD Secretary Donovan lays the blame on racial discrimination. The key phrases in his speech are: “Bottom line: people are being denied their freedom of choice and the benefits of full citizenship. Yet because of the subtle nature of this discrimination, often times, they don’t even know they have been subjected to this abuse.” “That’s why HUD is enhancing its enforcement...

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan gave an interesting speech at the NAACP meeting in Orlando on July 16th. To be sure, inner city poverty is a serious problem. The public policy question is how to best address this problem. But HUD Secretary Donovan lays the blame on racial discrimination. The key phrases in his speech are: “Bottom line: people are being denied their freedom of choice and the benefits of full citizenship. Yet because of the subtle nature of this discrimination, often times, they don’t even know they have been subjected to this abuse.” “That’s why HUD is enhancing its enforcement...

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan gave an interesting speech at the NAACP meeting in Orlando on July 16th. The key phrases in his speech are: “Bottom line: people are being denied their freedom of choice and the benefits of full citizenship. Yet because of the subtle nature of this discrimination, often times, they don’t even know they have been subjected to this abuse.” “That’s why HUD is enhancing its enforcement techniques by initiating investigations on our own without waiting for individuals to file complaints.” This reminds me of the Federal government decision to slaughter barred owls … in order to save...

Mark Levin weighed in tonight on a new HUD ‘fair housing’ neighborhood-mapping diversity program that is supposed to help ‘integrate’ communities by giving people access to better communities than the ones they currently live in. It’s social engineering like we did with Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac in the recent past…or as Levin called said, it’s communism and he likened it to ‘North Korea’. Levin says that tyranny is here and it’s spreading: Folks, I’m trying to tell you something. …It’s here, tyranny is here. And it’s spreading. And I don’t care what Bob Dole says. I don’t care what...

Diversity: Now even ZIP codes are racist, and according to this race-obsessed administration, you're racist for living in a suburban area with little public housing. And it plans to change that. In what may be the most ambitious social-engineering project undertaken by the federal government, the administration is mapping every neighborhood in America by race. The stated purpose is to use the data to compel local officials to loosen zoning laws and build more public housing, thereby offering more poor inner-city minorities better opportunities for housing and education. But the unstated purpose is forced racial integration. The suburbs are just...

HUD's New 'Fair Housing' Rule Establishes Diversity Data for Every Neighborhood in U.S. o ensure that "every American is able to choose to live in a community they feel proud of," HUD has published a new fair-housing regulation intended to give people access to better neighborhoods than the ones they currently live in. The goal is to help communities understand "fair housing barriers" and "establish clear goals" for "improving integrated living patterns and overcoming historic patterns of segregation.

To ensure that "every American is able to choose to live in a community they feel proud of," HUD has published a new fair-housing regulation intended to give people access to better neighborhoods than the ones they currently live in. The goal is to help communities understand "fair housing barriers" and "establish clear goals" for "improving integrated living patterns and overcoming historic patterns of segregation." “This proposed rule represents a 21st century approach to fair housing, a step forward to ensuring that every American is able to choose to live in a community they feel proud of – where they...

To ensure that "every American is able to choose to live in a community they feel proud of," HUD has published a new fair-housing regulation intended to give people access to better neighborhoods than the ones they currently live in. The goal is to help communities understand "fair housing barriers" and "establish clear goals" for "improving integrated living patterns and overcoming historic patterns of segregation." “This proposed rule represents a 21st century approach to fair housing, a step forward to ensuring that every American is able to choose to live in a community they feel proud of – where they...