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Senator Barack Obama Supports Emergency Community Stabilization Funding (PDF, 37K)
June 21, 2008
The Save America’s Neighborhoods Campaign applauds Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for his support of housing legislation that provides emergency community stabilization funding. In a speech on Saturday, June 21, 2008, at the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ annual conference in Miami, Sen. Obama said that he would fight to overturn any veto issued by President Bush. In a statement issued earlier this week by the President’s office, the President threatened to veto any legislation that includes provisions for emergency funding.
Oversight and Government Reform Committee Hearing: "Neighborhoods: The Blameless Victims of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis."
May 21, 2008
“When foreclosure leads to vacant and abandoned houses, surrounding neighborhoods and local municipalities suffer significant consequences. Those effects include: falling property values of surrounding houses, loss of equity held by neighbors in these houses, loss of rental units for renters, loss of sales to neighborhood merchants, rise in crime, rise in municipal costs in police, fire (due to vandalism and arson), increased demolition and building inspection costs, increased legal expenses, increased demand on city social service programs, and a direct loss of property tax.”
Oversight and Government Reform Committee Hearing
Neighborhoods: The Blameless Victims of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis
May 21, 2008
“Abandoned property is a source of blight, crime, and disease. Vacant urban land reduces the very resource available to address the problems it creates. Local property taxes are made less available due to devaluation of land values. For example, abandoned houses account for 75 to 90 percent of fires in the City of Flint, yet the City has reduced fire service due to a significant financial crisis.”
“Vacant land is both a cause and result of urban disinvestment. As cities have experienced population loss and housing market declines, the result is the decline of property values. Blight spreads as empty houses sit vacant, infecting adjacent properties and ruining entire neighborhoods in a matter of just a few years. An abandoned house is a “Typhoid Mary” to a neighborhood struggling to sustain itself.”
Oversight and Government Reform Committee Hearing
Neighborhoods: The Blameless Victims of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis
May 21, 2008
National Association of Counties
“Cities and counties would be able to utilize this funding for the purchase and rehabilitation of vacant and foreclosed homes. This assistance will help stabilize communities by reselling the homes for occupancy as soon as possible.”
Press Release
May 8, 2008
“This legislation is a real attempt to provide stability to the housing market and the economy as a whole in a way that provides support for West Virginians and homeowners throughout the country.”
House Committee on Financial Services
Floor Statement
May 7, 2008
"The human reality behind these numbers is revealed if you visit, as I have the past year, cities and communities in cities like Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; or the San Bernardino and Stockton metropolitan areas in California, where block after block is dotted by foreclosed properties, many of them suffering from neglect or actual vandalism. These abandoned and foreclosed properties drag down the value of homes still occupied by working families, and contribute to a cascade effect whereby plummeting home prices erode the tax base of State and local governments and cause real estate related industries such as the construction trades to suffer."
"I urge Members to hear the pleas of the Nation's governors, mayors, community-based organizations and ordinary citizens to provide this critical relief to stabilize neighborhoods and stimulate the economy."
Press Release
May 1, 2008
“It is important that we reduce the number of foreclosures both as a matter of alleviating the pain for some individuals and stabilizing some neighborhoods. It is my hope that this legislation will restore some stability to the housing market, put liquidity back in the market, and not interfere with the market, but help restore it.”
Opening Statement
April 16, 2008
"Not only will this initiative help deserving homeowners, and the communities in which they live, this program will help stabilize capital markets, put a floor on an excessive downward spiral of housing prices, and get capital flowing once again."
House Committee on Financial Services Hearing
Using FHA for Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention
April 10, 2008
“The proposed $10 billion fund administered by states to acquire, rehabilitate, and sell foreclosed homes will provide a critical tool to curtail the negative impacts foreclosures have on our neighborhoods and communities. As proposed, the income targeting directs assistance to those most in need while supporting mixed income communities. I support the provisions that allow these funds to be used to make homes affordable for low and moderate income families. Soft seconds – deferred loans that maintain property values while making the home affordable – as well as carrying costs, allow for the financial success of this strategy."
House Committee on Financial Services Hearing
Using FHA for Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention
April 10, 2008
“The proposed Loans and Grants program also would be of tremendous assistance to the District…The federal funding proposed in your legislation would allow us to significantly expand our efforts to restore foreclosed properties to productive use, having an even greater impact on our critical shortage of affordable housing."
House Committee on Financial Services Hearing
Using FHA for Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention
April 10, 2008
"With this proposed legislation, you are protecting the investments the federal government has made in our neighborhoods through CDBG, HOME, and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit. Otherwise, it will take years to undo the massive damage that a relatively small amount of foreclosed properties can cause in a dense, urban neighborhood. I deeply appreciate the work of this Committee and hope this bill moves forward quickly in both the House AND the Senate."
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