Posted on 02/25/2009 9:14:44 AM PST by SwinneySwitch
Stemming home foreclosures in Hispanic communities is crucial to restoring financial stability and ending the nation's economic crisis, former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros said Tuesday.
“It is critical for this country to grow the backbone of its economy, its middle class, and the future middle class in large measure is going to be Latino,” Cisneros said.
Cisneros made the comments during a telephonic symposium on Latinos and the economy — “Back to Basics: Restoring Latino Financial Security” — sponsored by the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic rights organization, and the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.
Luis Pastor, president of the Latino Community Credit Union in North Carolina, said minorities must have the financial access and education needed to buy homes and build financial security.
One in 10 Latino families missed a mortgage payment last year, said NCLR's Janis Bowdler. In many cases, they exhaust savings and run up credit card debt before seeking financial help.
“Latinos clearly will be among those who suffer most if foreclosure proceeds at this pace,” Cisneros said.
President Barack Obama is crafting a $75 billion plan to stem foreclosures, allowing banks to modify some mortgages. It comes on the heels of a $787 billion stimulus bill that extends unemployment and health care benefits.
Those measures are important to restoring the financial safety net for Latinos, said Cisneros, who acknowledged that a lender he worked with had a hand in the nation's economic downturn.
Cisneros, secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton, served on the board of directors for Countrywide Financial Corp. from 2001 to 2007 — during a period when the number of subprime loans increased to borrowers with questionable credit.
He resigned just days before Countrywide reported a $1.2 billion loss and that a third of its borrowers were late on mortgage payments. Cisneros said Countrywide was not a predatory or abusive lender, but did have a subprime arm that wrote mortgages.
“Did Countrywide go too far? In retrospect, maybe so,” he said, adding that the repackaging of questionable loans by Wall Street for international markets contributed heavily to the crisis.
“Step one, that we have to take, is curb the unscrupulous business practices,” Cisneros said.
Well, Duh! Why do you think we're in this mess to begin with? It couldn't possibly be because folks who didn't have a prayer of making their mortgage payments in the first place were given mortgages, could it?
From the people that brought us ‘women and minorities hit hardest’.
Ick. Neither one of those guys knows where the other’s fist has been.
“It is critical for this country to grow the backbone of its economy, its middle class, and the future middle class in large measure is going to be Latino,” Cisneros said.”
I guess this would be an “approved” left wing racist statement.
Has any country as big as ours and as powerful ever fallen so fast? I think by June it will all be over and people will be fleeing the country on life rafts like the Cubans did. Get your passports in order now.
17 in a home? You must live close by Montebello then.
How is he allowed to focus on latinos? If someone else focused on whites, the person would be smeared and probably shot.
And, while he was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, he cleaned up what?
Maybe his girlfriend, but certainly not unscrupulous business practices.
I agree re foreclosures being greatly related to illegal immigration. In Southern California alone, many hispanics moved to homes in Antelope Valley (Lancaster/Palmdale) and the Riverside/San Bernardino County areas. Along with them went numerous blacks and some others...
In huge numbers these are the homes being “lost.” They were never expensive compared to other So. Cal. homes, but they were obviously still too expensive for those who never had any business getting “loans” in the first place.
Many times the vacant homes were trashed before occupants left — they took various fixtures with them, ripped from ceilings and kitchens. It’s deplorable and I’d be happy to help deport the illegals and otherwise deal with the rest of the unseemly former “homeowners.”
What about the gay nuns who still fear the bicycle bar who can’t keep up with their payments?
10/7/08
A STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE WITH ACORN
RESCUE REWARDS HOUSING HUSTLERS
MICHELE MALKIN, NY POST
If you thought the trillion- dollar-plus "financial-rescue plan" signed into law Friday had been stripped of the radical group ACORN, think again: The Chicago-based Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now's fingerprints are still all over the law. ACORN's participation in "fixing" a crisis it helped create is flabbergasting. For decades, the left-wing activist group pressured lenders to give loans to lower-income borrowers who couldn't otherwise afford homes. The grateful homeowners then become political recruits, serving as foot soldiers for ACORN's radical agenda.
Problem is, such mortgages are now going bad all across America. ACORN's answer: Pressuring the banks not to foreclose on bad risks. And now, with the "rescue" bill, they're getting ready to simply rewrite mortgages to make them affordable.
House Republicans removed one pro-ACORN measure from the rescue bill - torpedoeing a provision devoting 20 percent of all profits from the bailout to a housing slush fund - which would've funneled money to ACORN and similar groups.
In its place, however, ACORN's favorite lawmakers - led by Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) - got ACORN-championed "foreclosure-mitigation" provisions into the rescue. This will radically expand the federal role in meddling with mortgage loans. The key sections mandate that the Treasury "consent" to rewriting loans to prevent foreclosures - not only by reducing interest, but also by cutting loan principal. Stuck with a $300,000 mortgage you can't pay? Get the government to wave its magic wand and cut your debt to $150,000.
The deal is only for those who have fallen behind on their mortgages, of course - not for all you chumps who've been paying on time. And it's a good bet that ACORN mortgage counselors will "help" decide which distressed borrowers benefit, and how. The group's housing arm, the Acorn Housing Corp., is already funded with millions of taxpayer dollars to renegotiate loans for low-income people who should have never received them in the first place. Loan modification is ACORN's bread and butter. And when the group doesn't get what it wants, it will sue, protest and shake down until business and government bend again.
Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) foresees havoc: "Liberals who manage these programs will give away millions of free or reduced homes in neighborhoods all over America to families who could not otherwise afford them. "The federal government now has the power to create federal housing projects, house by house, in neighborhoods all over America. Just imagine what that means for property values and the safety and security of your neighborhood."
All this comes on top of the $5 billion ACORN-backed housing bill passed in July, which hands $600 million-plus to ACORN and similar groups to bail out homeowners under water and help countless more risky loan prospects.
During the floor debate on Friday, Reps. Frank and Waters assured Democratic colleagues that they had personally lobbied Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson on these measures and would press him to consent to "do the kind of loan modifications we've been urging." Waters exulted: "We're in charge! . . . We own them now."
If the banks and others that collect payments on these distressed mortgages don't write down enough loan principal to keep Rep. Frank happy, he threatens hearings and new legislation next year. He'll have the backing of ACORN. ACORN President Maude Hurd warns that her "members plan to hold Secretary Paulson accountable and ensure he uses this authority to make streamlined loan modifications a priority for struggling American families."
What's next? Principal write-downs on credit cards and car loans? What incentive do responsible borrowers have left to pay their bills on time?
As independent housing-bubble analyst and blogger Patrick Killelea (patricknet) notes: "Nobody was ever forced to borrow money. People who borrowed too much money made a mistake.
If they can do that with impunity, they will keep on doing it . . . Every prevented foreclosure also prevents a deserving family from buying at a reasonable price." Thanks to ACORN, the bailout enshrines the homeownership-at-all-costs mentality that got us into this mess in the first place.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10072008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/rescue_rewards_housing_hustlers_132399.htm
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