HUD isn’t listening

HUD isn’t listening

Plain Dealer: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has worked hard to hone its reputation as a bureaucratic morass from which few emerge with the help they need.

News that the federal agency is now impeding cities’ efforts to access stimulus dollars set aside to fight the foreclosure cataclysm — an economic quagmire HUD itself enabled by guaranteeing bad loans — should surprise no one.

Glacial pace

HUD’s deficiencies in implementing its $6 billion Neighborhood Stabilization Program — and the glacial pace of response by mortgage lenders holding many of the notes on homes the money could help return to the market — are impeding a housing recovery that appears to be picking up steam.

HUD, working with taxpayer dollars supposedly on taxpayers’ behalf, has to stop shuffling papers and actually get busy paving the road to recovery.