FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
for Friday, January 11, 2013
Contact: David Mandel, 916-446-5066
SACRAMENTO – The California Housing Financing Agency (CalHFA) will consider a dramatic proposal Friday to use billions of dollars from the TARP Hardest Hit State Fund to buy foreclosed homes and homes in default, and then resell or refinance them to their former owners with new financing at current market value, either directly or through a third party.
Details will be provided at a news conference Friday, January 11, at 1:30 p.m. at 500 Capitol Mall (street level). The CalHFA will meet at 2 p.m. in Room 1400 at 500 Capitol Mall.
Occupy Sacramento and California Housing Advocate(s) will ask CalHFA MAC(California Housing Finance Agency Mortgage Assistance Corporations) Board of Directors to implement in California the same program Short Sale/Buy Back Program that Oregon Financial Housing Administration is having success with (http://www.projectreconomy.org/component/k2/item/563-stories).
CalHFA Mac is the nonprofit entity formed to administer Keep Your Home California, which received nearly $2 billion to help struggling California homeowners to keep their homes.
“Our proposal is that CalHFA MAC use this $2 billion not for not just temporary help for homeowners, but for long-lasting, permanent solutions. This proposal can help a significant number of California foreclosure victims and provide the impetus to get more future funding. help the majority on lower and fixed incomes, such as seniors, benefit from the program,” said CHA and OS.
Since 2008, more than 1.5 million California families have lost their homes to foreclosure. Many more reluctantly concluded short sales or simply turned their homes over to their lenders. All these families have had their lives shattered due to an ugly mixture of predatory loans, absurdly inflated prices, dual tracking, denial of reasonable modifications — even banks foreclosing without proper loan assignment, or foreclosing mistakenly on the wrong house or on homeowners who are not in default, they added.
Copies of the proposal will be available at the press conference. It reads, in part:
“Discussion, recommendation and possible action regarding this Board instructing CalHFA to request U.S. Treasury authorization to immediately implement under the Hardest Hit States program the attached proposal for CalHFA to buy foreclosed homes, homes in default (as short sales) and/or loans in default. The homes would then be resold or refinanced, respectively, to their former owners, with new financing, at current market value. The purchase/sale could be done directly or through a third party intermediary, as is currently being done by the Oregon state HFA and others.”