Today, HUD granted the Chicago Housing Authority a 70$ million bond to help them refinance and allocate the funding necessary to repair and redevelop public housing all over the city. The bond allowed the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) to refinance existing bond loans, which ended up significantly decreasing their debt and freeing up money to do the housing overhauls that have been long-needed.
This refinancing is the first of its kind, and may become available to other Housing Authorities across the nation as well.
The CHA plans to revamp and modernize many of its existing units to improve the quality of life for residents, including the Trumbull Park Homes, Altgeld Gardens, and Washington Park. The plan includes replacing more than 18,000 distressed public housing units with 25,000 new or modernized units by 2010.
These new units probably won’t become available for a while, but will be open to FHA, VA as well as HUD housing grants and mortgage assistance programs as well once they do.
In response to recent claims of mortgage fraud running rampant in the southeastern United States, HUD has sponsored a symposium on how to recognize and avoid falling victim to this crime. The day-long educational conference is scheduled to be held in numerous areas throughout North and South Carolina, as well as Georgia and Florida.
Mortgage fraud can take on many forms, and in many cases requires a number of participants to work. Taking advantage of the modern lending system, where little or no verification is required to instate a mortgage loan, con-artists have bee working in teams to take money in loans from banks and lending institutions and never returning it. Often the crime begins with someone reporting false information on a loan application, but ends up requiring cooperation from a number of participants. Often loan closing attorneys and home appraisers are in on these crimes, and help to maximize the value of the loan and thus the criminal’s spoils.
One of the largest rates of mortgage foreclosure exists in South Carolina, which has seen a large spike in this crime in the past few years.
Many feel that loose standards and the ease of applying for a loan that has become an industry standard due to competition and an attempt to attract business has led to making it to easy for these people to succeed with their crimes. The absence of background checks and information verification allows many loan applicants to lie.
Lenders also are being bilked in South Carolina by organized networks of crooked professionals, said Brian Lamkin, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Columbia office and former head of the bureau’s national financial crimes section. “I’d say they’re more prevalent than one would realize,” he said.
HUD’s conferences are in conjunction with experts from the FBI’s white-collar crime units. Both agencies have an interest in seeing that the extent of mortgage fraud cases does not get further out of control. HUD hopes that raising awareness of the crime will not only lead to fewer instances, but also to legislative action which would make obtaining a mortgage a more rigorous process.
This morning, HUD announced that 1,000 public housing units will be opened in post-Katrina New Orleans this summer. Many of the city’s public housing units are scheduled for demolition and replacement, but 1,000 residences in the least damaged areas will be repaired and habitable by August.
This will come as good news to many of the 5,100 families who were living in public housing before Katrina and are looking to return.
HUD also plans to provide many of the city’s poorer African-American inhabitants who were living in public housing units that were destroyed with vouchers for rent payments in any kind of housing throughout New Orleans. With so many former public housing residents still living in tents, HUD hopes this will encourage more people to get back into real homes and resume some semblance of a normal life. HUD also plans to raise the amounts paid in vouchers to landlords, as rising rent rates throughout the city make it hard for many poor residents to afford to live anywhere.
HUD also pledged to accelerate the process of rebuilding and redevelopment. In conjunction with Mayor Ray Nagin, HUD and the city’s government are investigating the possibility of an employment condition, that those living in public housing who can work, must work as a condition of their habitation.
The re-emergence of public housing in New Orleans means the possibility of the market for home their developing once again. However, with properties in such high demand, the possibility of tapping into it or even buying ready-made homes in New Orleans is still low.
Despite an IRS ruling that is removing the type of assistance programs that provide for at least one in three FHA mortgages, HUD is trying to help more needy families be able to own homes through underwriting and sponsoring loans themlselves.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced that Idaho will receive $16,749,676 from HUD. The money will be used to
The U.S. Housing and Urban Development expressed Tuesday that the cost of housing would not change if Congress created a new regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as has been the talk around Washington D.C. HUD also expressed that the leaders of these two government-sponsored home loan enterprises are doing their best to help.
“HUD is supporting legislation that allows a regulator to limit the GSE’s portfolio to those investments necessary to carry out its mission, without trying to cripple or put it out of business,” Secretary Alphonso Jackson said in a speech to the National Association of Mortgage Brokers.
A GSE-reform bill was passed the House of Representatives last year and a different version was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. Neither side has been able to work out a compromise.
HUD also expressedthat they would soon propose new policies
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