Obama Unveils New Foreclosure Measures to Resuscitate Housing Market
President Obama has begun embracing housing policies that administration officials earlier thought unwise or unworkable as he embarks on his most aggressive push to address the nation’s foreclosure crisis and depressed real estate market since the first months of his tenure.
Obama has unveiled more than half a dozen plans in recent months to help millions more Americans refinance their mortgages at low rates, to reduce the debts owed by struggling homeowners and to expand existing programs to broaden the pool of borrowers eligible for government aid. The latest initiatives, announced this week, seek to help members of the military and Americans who have government-insured mortgages.
The administration had previously rejected some of these efforts on the grounds that they were wrong on the merits, risky for taxpayers or could not be done. For instance, administration officials in the past had said they didn’t want to bail out speculators or people who had taken on far too much debt. Now, under certain circumstances, the administration is willing to do both.
What’s more, in recent months Obama has used his bully pulpit to discuss housing far more than earlier in his term. After rarely mentioning the nation’s housing problems for several years, the president is directly confronting the issue, which he has called the “most stubborn” of his presidency.
The new actions come after waves of criticism from Democratic groups, community activists, lawmakers and economists, who have argued that the administration was far too slow to deal with the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression.