What the Candidates Think
Obama: President Barack Obama says that he's helped lift the housing crisis by helping homeowners refinance their mortgages, modifying loans to keep more than 5 million families housed, passing Wall Street reform, establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, allowing the unemployed to put off mortgage payments for a year and expanding the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, among other actions. ( whitehouse.gov)
Romney: Mitt Romney's housing plan points out a seeming paradox: "The only path to a healthy housing market is a healthy economy, but a housing recovey, is central to a healthy economy." Romney emphasizes that his economic plan would help ameliorate the housing crisis by increasing employment and take-home pay. Beyond that, Romney would sell the 200,000 government-owned foreclosed homes; help people find alternatives to foreclosure; reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and "replace complex rules with smart regulation to hold banks accountable, restore a functioning marketplace and restart lending to credit-worthy borrowers." ( mittromney.com)
As of July 1, 2012, there were 17,428 properties in Massachusetts that had foreclosure activity and had not yet been foreclosed, a 20 percent decline from July 1, 2011. The hardest-hit communities were Brockton, Athol and Springfield. (Mass. Housing Partnership)
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