Which of these families deserves government mortgage help?
Please tell me which of the following families deserves government mortgage help: A. single mother with three kids. working, never married, child support erratic at best. bought a house in 2006 with a 5/1 ARM subprime loan. can't afford payments now that the introductory low interest rate is ending. B. married couple with two kids. both were working in 2005 when they bought a house using an alt-a loan. she lost her job in 2007 and her new one pays less. his self-employment business is slowing as his customers feel pinched and do without his service due to the "recession". two months behind on payments with reset to higher rate in November. C. married couple without children. Lost their house to foreclosure in 2007 after he was disabled in a work accident. Disability wasn't enough to continue making the payments after his medical costs soared. D. 83 year old widow. Owns her house free and clear, but can't afford the property taxes and insurance because houses in her neighborhood tripled in past ten years due to easy money loans and thus many buyers. Now can't sell as the market has crashed. Six months past due on property taxes. E. couple with two college age children who re-fi'd their house in 2006 to pay their childrens' tuition. Closed a 401k to make tuition payments in 2007 and borrowed from relatives to pay again this fall. House is 45 days past due but older child doesn't graduate until December 2010. F. Retired couple whose only regular income is small pension plus social security. Their retirement assets in stock market have taken a beating this year. Borrowed in 2004 against their house when he had a heart attack that caused his early retirement [which crippled his pension]. Rising costs of gas and food have made them 30 days past due and they have no way to catch up without further damaging their retirement assets. G. Manager and stay at home wife with two children in public school. He lost his job two years ago -- it was outsourced to China. Now works at Home Depot, but the money isn't 1/3rd of what he used to make. Still looking for that managerial job, which costs hundreds a month in extra costs. they've gotten their foreclosure notice and are thinking about filing bankruptcy to buy time. H. Market trader and retired wife who lost $125,000 when his short sales were arbitrarily ended by SEC order in this financial crisis. Hasn't made trading profit since last October. Now two months late and getting daily phone calls from mortgage servicing company asking for money he can't pay if he is ever to recover his losses in the markets. I. Retired couple who saved and planned out their retirement for last 25 years. Retired in 2007 owing nothing, but living off 401k payouts and social security. their assets are down 25% so far in this recession and they'll have to cut costs next year, which means short selling the house into increasingly bad market and paying bank off on the loss over next who knows how many years [if ever]. J. Sixty something widow whose assets were wiped out by husband's death via Alzheimer Disease and private nursing home for 4 years. Has only Social Security now as all their retirement assets except the house went to pay the nursing home. Took a mortgage in 2005 to pay off the husband's medical bills and burial. *** please tell me which, if any, of these families deserve government help in staying in their home or recovering their home. This question has no political point to make and is solely to gather information regarding what the Y!A public thinks America's public policy should be. While all of these situations are real to some family, I carefully crafted each of them to show a case where the people involved arguably are losing or lost their home because some other part of our economic system had a breakdown. In theory, none of these deserve government mortgage help, imo. Some of them needed either less or more government in some other part of their lives and because of that issue, were financially savaged to the point of losing their home. Afaic, the mortgage industry should NOT bear the brunt of other failures in America's systems -- doing so only distorts the economy even further. Did the mortgage industry have its own failures? YES. Mostly, they had a failure of spine. They didn't stand up to Congress and HUD in the 1990s when both needed to be told that their rules were requiring the banks to write bad loans that shouldn't have ever been made. Big government needed to be told "NO".
Government - 4 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
None of the above. Sorry but I don't want to work to pay for someone else's home. Most times these people bought a house they couldn't afford and thought they would just refi it later or make a ton when they sold it. Some have bought 2 and 3 homes so they could make two and three times more money.
2 :
None. Government isn't supposed to provide cradle to grave. Hotsauce. Dont be scared we have made it through harder times. We will be okay. It will be a little harder for a while.
3 :
The sick. The old. The single parents. That's it. Don't we all know someone or several people who would fit into any one of these categories. I AM SCARED. This country is headed for some tough times and there is nothing we can do but watch it happen.
4 :
Spare me your bleeding heart they should all get in a pit and fight and throw poo at each other like monkeys, that's if I am only being completely honest to your obvious question. I give your question the seriousness it deserves.
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