Sept. 22, 2008
NEWS ANALYSIS: Land Bank for America Proposed Nearly Year Ago
By Tony Rutherford
Huntingtonnews.net Reporter
Huntington, WV (HNN) – While surfing the Sunday major city newspapers, I found an interesting proposal, which resembles one that a legislative committee has granted Huntington in its “home rule” authority.
Writing in the Washington Times, Christian E. Weller, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, advanced a multi-prong proposal for handling failing financial institutions with huge underperforming mortgage debt.
Hoping to avoid the all but certain mass bailout, Weller proposed that municipalities and non-profit neighborhood groups be given government dollars to purchase the bulk of these “vacant and blighted” properties. Making a bulk purchase, the municipalities and non-profits would “rehabilitate them as needed and offer them for sale or rent at affordable prices. The rehabilitation process in addition to returning these homes to productive use, will create construction jobs in an otherwise moribund sector of the economy.”
The professor’s proposal mirrors one advanced by the Great American Dream Neighborhood Stabilization program in a January 31, 2008 report. That report indicated that foreclosures are rampant (up 75% nationally over 2006) and lender owned homes doubled in the fourth quarter of 2007.
“We don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing what issues we focus on when people lose their homes, when the grass isn't cut, when property taxes aren't collected and when property values drop,” said Douglas Palmer, mayor of Trenton, N.J., and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, whose winter meeting ended on January 25. “Mayors are on the front line.”
The GADNS proposal for the “glut of foreclosed properties” was a government fund to “provide money quickly and efficiently to local non-profit organizations or municipalities to purchase foreclosed properties and offer them for sale to qualified low and moderate income families on affordable terms. Proceeds from the sale would be used to purchase additional properties, thus multiplying the purchasing power provided by the fund.”
Although this appears to step beyond the “land bank” from tearing down burned out houses, the Center for American Progress appears to have foreseen the cascading foreclosure crisis.
To read their lengthy “Addressing Foreclosures” report click here:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/01/gardns.html
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NEWS ANALYSIS: Land Bank for America Proposed Nearly Year Ago
By Tony Rutherford
Huntingtonnews.net Reporter
Huntington, WV (HNN) – While surfing the Sunday major city newspapers, I found an interesting proposal, which resembles one that a legislative committee has granted Huntington in its “home rule” authority.
Writing in the Washington Times, Christian E. Weller, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, advanced a multi-prong proposal for handling failing financial institutions with huge underperforming mortgage debt.
Hoping to avoid the all but certain mass bailout, Weller proposed that municipalities and non-profit neighborhood groups be given government dollars to purchase the bulk of these “vacant and blighted” properties. Making a bulk purchase, the municipalities and non-profits would “rehabilitate them as needed and offer them for sale or rent at affordable prices. The rehabilitation process in addition to returning these homes to productive use, will create construction jobs in an otherwise moribund sector of the economy.”
The professor’s proposal mirrors one advanced by the Great American Dream Neighborhood Stabilization program in a January 31, 2008 report. That report indicated that foreclosures are rampant (up 75% nationally over 2006) and lender owned homes doubled in the fourth quarter of 2007.
“We don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing what issues we focus on when people lose their homes, when the grass isn't cut, when property taxes aren't collected and when property values drop,” said Douglas Palmer, mayor of Trenton, N.J., and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, whose winter meeting ended on January 25. “Mayors are on the front line.”
The GADNS proposal for the “glut of foreclosed properties” was a government fund to “provide money quickly and efficiently to local non-profit organizations or municipalities to purchase foreclosed properties and offer them for sale to qualified low and moderate income families on affordable terms. Proceeds from the sale would be used to purchase additional properties, thus multiplying the purchasing power provided by the fund.”
Although this appears to step beyond the “land bank” from tearing down burned out houses, the Center for American Progress appears to have foreseen the cascading foreclosure crisis.
To read their lengthy “Addressing Foreclosures” report click here:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/01/gardns.html
Share This Story:
Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
