Web Wealth: The housing crisis
The housing crisis, which exploded first as a subprime-mortgage crisis, continues to frustrate homeowners and policymakers. These sites are keeping track, and dissecting the causes.
The housing crisis, which exploded first as a subprime-mortgage crisis, continues to frustrate homeowners and policymakers. These sites are keeping track, and dissecting the causes.
Oversights. The Congressional Oversight Panel said last week that the government's main program for preventing home foreclosures was not working. See video, or read transcripts of testimony at panel hearings, here. And there are other reports, such as the committee's take on the "robo-signing" controversy, and its assessments of TARP and other bailout measures of the financial crisis.
Complaint button. ConsumerAffairs.com, a user-friendly site with its famous and ever-handy "complaint button" for registering your own dissatisfaction with a product or service, takes a good hard look at the issues now complicating our financial lives, including housing debt, investing, legal services, and taxes. This page on finance and legal matters is just part of the ConsumerAffairs empire. Parts of the site deal with cars, education, health, employment, and other matters.
Racialized process. An October study calling the foreclosure crisis "a highly racialized process" is summarized here in an announcement from the American Sociological Association. It says the study authors found that preexisting residential segregation "created a unique niche of minority clients" who had been sold the risky subprime loans that were in great demand for use in mortgage-backed securities.
Read the study from the American Sociological Review here:
Track developments in the housing crisis from this regularly updated page by the Center for Economic Policy Research. The center, founded by economists, promotes debate on economic and social issues. Center codirector Dean Baker has proposed a "right to rent" as a stopgap measure to keep struggling owners in their homes during the crisis. Read about the proposal here.