CHESSNOID

First of all,  if the title of this blog post offends you, then you need to slap yourself in the face, get over it, and wake up to reality!  Yes, Obama and his administration are FAILING in solving the housing crisis.  They have literally spent trillions of dollars and will be spending more, but only a trickle of that money is going to battle the origin of the recession which is the housing bust.  If you look at the numbers, then you will see the truth.

Forget about the stupid headlines that the recession is over, the housing market has bottomed, and things are getting worse at a slower pace.  They are all positive headlines, but guided by false optimism.  Here is the reality:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) —

The foreclosure plague is not going away — it’s only getting worse.

A record 1.53 million  (1,530,000) properties were in the foreclosure process — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — during the first six months of 2009. That was 9% more than the previous six months and 15% more than the same period of 2008, according to a report released Thursday by RealtyTrac.

There were a total of 1.91 million filings resulting in 1 out of every 84 U.S. properties receiving at least one filing in the first half of the year. Banks repossessed 386,800 properties.

“What this means is, despite the intensity of the efforts on the part of government and lenders we don’t have a handle on foreclosures yet,” said Rick Sharga, a spokesman for RealtyTrac.

And, in a bad sign for a housing recovery, there was no recorded improvement in June, the last month of the cycle. More than 336,000 homes reported foreclosure filings, the fourth straight 300,000-plus month. Filings were up 33% over last June and nearly 5% compared with May.

“Foreclosure activity continues to increase to record levels,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac in a prepared statement. “Unemployment-related foreclosures account for much of this increased activity, and the high number of borrowers who find themselves owing more on their mortgages than their homes’ are now worth represent a potentially significant future risk.”

Now, there are solutions. Real solutions that doesn’t necessarily bail out banks that should be allowed to fail. Let the banks fail and the FDIC can them take them over and resolve the real issues.  Stop making stupid BS “czars” and deal with the problem.   So here is a real solution that has been implemented by city governments that are working with some measurable level of success!

(Reuters) -

California’s Riverside County has been one of the most punished areas in the U.S. housing crash and now local leaders are among the first in the nation with a program to buy foreclosed homes and sell them back to young families.

The city of Riverside is using money recently made available by the Obama administration to help communities lure buyers back to areas hit by a wave of foreclosures.

In recent weeks, Riverside began leveraging more than $6.5 million in federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds, added to its own redevelopment money, to purchase houses in the worst shape, fix them up and sell them to mostly first-time homebuyers. Other cities, like Chicago, are considering similar plans.

“Where a lot of communities are trying to figure out how to spend the money, or offering purchase funds or down-payment assistance, we’re actually very hands-on with our program,” said Eva Yakutis, the housing and neighborhoods manager in Riverside, California, a working-class community of 300,000 about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.

“We’re making the purchase, we’re overseeing the rehab, we’re overseeing the sale of the properties. We’re at the forefront of most cities or counties.”

California’s Inland Empire, made up of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, suffered some of the highest foreclosure rates in California during the housing meltdown, leaving behind thousands of boarded-up homes in blighted neighborhoods no longer attractive to young families even as prices dropped.

About 4,000 of Riverside’s 60,000 homes are in foreclosure and twice that number are considered to be at risk. Some 28,000 owners, or 1 in 27 Riverside County homes, defaulted on mortgages in the first quarter of the year, 35 percent more than a year earlier.

….

“You want to have stable, healthy neighborhoods, and part of that is home ownership or stable residents who are there to stay,” Yakutis said. “And from that you get strong schools. You get diminished crime. It’s all related.”

Chicago is moving forward with a similar program, identifying foreclosed properties that could be purchased, renovated and prepared for sale, city spokeswoman Molly Sullivan said.

Buyers’ incomes must not exceed 120 percent of the area’s median income, about $90,000 for a family of four. “This is about stabilizing neighborhoods,” Sullivan said. “Getting vacant, foreclosed properties back to productive use.”

The plan is to rehab up to 2,500 foreclosed homes in the Illinois city over the next three to five years.

Glendale, Arizona, a Phoenix suburb where many homes have gone into foreclosure, plans to use the bulk of its $6.1 million from Washington to acquire and rehabilitate foreclosed and abandoned homes, provide assistance to qualified buyers and develop rental housing for seniors.

“When you have an abandoned home or series of abandoned homes, they can become an attractive nuisance,” Erik Strunk, community partnerships director, said of the plan, which is expected to kick off in early summer.

“There’s also the maintenance issue,” he said. “The family was a victim of foreclosure. Now there’s no one living there, so now you have the weeds starting to grow up, the door to the rear yard is unsecured. You may have a green pool here and there. It’s demoralizing, it threatens neighborhood stability, and it will lower property values.”