Foreclosure Help Blog

No Reason to be Jealous of the Housing Bailout Acts - No One Will Get Help Anyway

Some former homeowners who lost a house to foreclosure in the past few years or longer ago seem to feel that the new housing bills are unfairly helping out current borrowers. After all, where was the political activism and federal assistance years ago when other families were being set out on the street? Looking at the new housing legislation more carefully, however, should indicate to previous foreclosure victims that current homeowners will receive more harm than good.

But because now the foreclosure crisis issue has become a political debate point, various bills have been passed over the previous year that claim to help homeowners in foreclosure save their homes. But no one who lost a house in the past has much to worry about — most of these federal bills are designed more to help out corporations and banks than actual homeowners.

For instance, one of the housing legislation bills had tax breaks for airlines and automakers, which are not the typical foreclosure victims. So average taxpayers will be funding the bailout — not of other homeowners losing their properties due to subprime loans and predatory lending — but of corporations who have lost profits because of the slowdown in the economy!

Even if previous homeowners were facing foreclosure now, there is little chance the housing bills would help them save their homes for very long. The latest act is designed to help about 400,000 borrowers, out of possibly millions of potential foreclosures expected in the next few years. If they are lucky, maybe 10% of homeowners behind on their mortgage will get help from the federal government, and even then, these programs are still voluntary for the banks.

So the bill is really just a token effort by Congress to get homeowners to shut up and go vote for either party taking credit for the legislation for another election cycle. The programs are voluntary for the banks, do not apply to all homeowners, and will not do anything to stop foreclosure on a large scale, or impact the inflation and credit crunch that are really at the heart of the corrupt financing system that is pushing people into foreclosure in the first place.

If anything, similar bills passed when former borrowers lost their homes probably would have made the situation even worse, just as the new acts will exacerbate the slowdown in the economy. Tons of new federal legislation, and any given homeowner might not have qualified for any of it — but they would have to finance other people who did qualify for solutions from the government even as they were losing their own home.

It is important that everyone look at what these new bills do — not what they are explained as in the media, and not what they are named. In reality, all Congress is doing is taking money away from every person in America to give to corporations who are losing money because people in America do not have enough money to go shopping with those corporations as much as they used to because of previous acts of government. Makes sense, right?