Sunday, November 30, 2008
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — A national coalition of faith-based organizations has launched an effort to push the federal government for a more streamlined approach to handling troubled mortgages, with the aim of keeping more owners in their homes.
“Families are losing their homes and they’re on the street, and that’s just morally wrong,” said Mary Rabon, a member of the Kansas affiliate of PICO National Network, an alliance of 1,000 U.S. congregations, based in Oakland, Calif.
More than 200 members of PICO, which stands for People Improving Communities Through Organizing, were in Washington last week to meet with federal officials and stage a “prayer rally” outside the Treasury Building.
“Wake up. Wake up,” chanted the demonstrators. They say they want Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to “wake up” to the reality of the foreclosure crisis and use the powers granted to him in the bailout legislation to stop “preventable” foreclosures.
Paulson opposes funding a plan championed by Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair that offers loan modifications on standardized terms to as many borrowers as possible from the government’s $700 billion financial rescue fund.
Under the plan supported by PICO, every bank that accepts taxpayer bailout money would be required to accept the same set of loan-modification procedures, setting payments to no more than 34 percent of borrowers’ incomes and, in some cases, reducing principles to reflect falling property values. Funding for the program would come from the $700 billion bailout fund.