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Obama administration struggles to help homeowners A look at the Obama administration’s efforts in trying to help homeowners and bring the nation out of its housing slump.
Feb. 18, 2009
At Dobson High School in Mesa, Ariz., President Obama talks about the foreclosure crisis. Obama unveiled a $75 billion foreclosure prevention program to help as many as 9 million homeowners obtain affordable mortgages.
Ross D. Franklin
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AP
Related Content
Feb. 18, 2009
Geithner, in the audience before Obama's remarks about the home mortgage crisis. Obama largely entrusted Geithner with overseeing the administration's response to the housing crisis, The Washington Post's Zachary A. Goldfarb reported.
Gerald Herbert
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AP
April 6, 2009
Geithner, center, announces a coordinated government effort to protect homeowners from criminal scams as they seek assistance under President Obama's Making Home Affordable Program. From left are Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Liebowitz, Geithner, Attorney General Eric Holder and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.
J. Scott Applewhite
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AP
May 14, 2009
From left, the Treasury secretary, National Community Reinvestment Coalition President and Chief Executive John Taylor, and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan meet with homeowners who are using the Making Home Affordable Program's trial modified mortgages. A few days later, on May 20, Obama signed into law the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act and legislation that gives the federal government resources to crack down on mortgage fraud.
Haraz N. Ghanbari
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AP
Oct. 16, 2009
Homeowners get help from a counselor at the Cow Palace in Daly City, Calif. Thousands of homeowners attended the event, sponsored by Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, a Boston-based nonprofit helping people to restructure high-risk loans. After a slow start, the Obama administration's mortgage relief program had reached one in five eligible homeowners, a government report said on Nov. 10.
Marcio Jose Sanchez
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AP
Dec. 14, 2009
Groups of homeowners attend a news conference on home foreclosures near the Treasury Department in Washington. A few days earlier, the federal agency released a report showing that only 4 percent of homeowners in the administration's foreclosure-relief Making Home Affordable Program were in the permanent loan modification stage.
Haraz N. Ghanbari
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AP
March 11, 2010
Hundreds of Arizona homeowners come to meet with housing counselors and representatives from major lenders in Glendale, Ariz. The outreach event was organized by federal agencies under the Obama administration's Making Home Affordable Program.
Ross D. Franklin
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AP
July 20, 2010
A hillside covered with homes in Happy Valley, Ore. In August 2010, the Obama administration approved plans to send $600 million to help unemployed homeowners avoid foreclosure in five states. The Treasury Department said that mortgage-assistance proposals submitted by North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and South Carolina received approval. The states estimate their efforts could help up to 50,000 homeowners.
Rick Bowmer
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AP
July 21, 2010
A "bank owned" sign on a home in Hawthorne, Calif., that is listed as a foreclosure on a HUD Web site. Nearly half of the homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration's flagship mortgage-relief program had fallen out.
Reed Saxon
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AP
Feb. 14, 2011
Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee speaks to the media at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House. Goolsbee, who left the White House in August, and other Obama advisers did not favor a big program of debt reduction for homeowners.
Alex Wong
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Getty Images
Feb. 22, 2011
Geithner, Obama and Gene Sperling, now director of the White House’s National Economic Council, attend a small-business forum in Cleveland. Geithner came to play one of the administration’s most prominent roles in overseeing housing policy, but the former Treasury secretary worried that some steps to help homeowners posed risks to the financial system.
Pete Souza
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White House
March 15, 2011
Geithner and Donovan testify during a hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill. Geithner and Donovan testified on the Obama administration's report to Congress on overhauling the U.S. housing finance market.
Alex Wong
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Getty Images
Aug. 5, 2011
Obama meets with Geithner and Sperling in the Oval Office. Over the summer, the president gave his most public indication of his frustration over his administration's housing policy. "The continuing decline in the housing market is something that hasn’t bottomed out as quickly we expected. So that’s continued to be a big drag on the economy," Obama said.
Pete Souza
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White House
A home in Fort Myers, Fla., sits deteriorating.The Fort Myers area has scores of unsold properties and foreclosed homes, and was ranked as the area with the second-highest foreclosure rate in the United States in the third quarter of 2010.Today, more than a quarter of U.S. homeowners are “underwater,” owing more than their homes are worth.
Michael S. Williamson
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The Washington Post
Feb. 1, 2012
President Barack Obama holds up a proposed mortgage application form as he speaks at the James Lee Community Center in Falls Church, Va., on Feb. 1, 2012. Obama outlined a proposal he announced in his State of the Union address to allow homeowners with privately held mortgages to take advantage of record low rates, for an annual savings of about $3,000 for the average borrower.
Cliff Owen
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AP
Feb. 9, 2012
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, left, and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, right, look on as President Obama speaks about the details of a housing settlement between federal and state officials and mortgage lenders, Feb. 9, 2012. Five U.S. banks will pay more than $25 billion in the biggest civil settlement involving states and the federal government to end a probe of abusive foreclosure practices stemming from the collapse of the housing bubble.
Kevin Dietsch
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via Bloomberg
March 6, 2012
President Obama speaks to troops at Bagram Air Base in Kabul, May 2, 2012. In March, Obama announced a plan to cut refinancing fees for any loan insured by the Federal Housing Administration. He also outlined a new agreement with banks to review foreclosures for members of the military and provide compensation to anyone who wrongfully lost a home.
Kevin Lamarque
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Reuters
May 11, 2012
President Obama speaks in Boulder City, Nev., on March 21, 2012. On a Nevada trip in May, Obama announced a spike in the number of Americans taking advantage of a federal mortgage aid program that let them refinance their loans.The program, Obama said, allows homeowners to reduce their monthly payments because of historically low interest rates.
Julie Jacobson
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AP
Sept. 25, 2012
President Obama comments on the country's positive economic developments, flanked by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Sheila Bair, former chairman of the FDIC. In Bair's new book, she says top advisers in the Obama and George W. Bush administrations paid little more than lip service to helping borrowers at risk of foreclosure, instituting programs they knew were likely to fail and ignoring her recommendations about how to improve them.
Gerald Martineau
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The Washington Post
Feb. 21, 2013
One year after the National Mortgage Settlement, the court-appointed monitor of the settlement said homeowners have received about $46 billion in relief. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said the progress exceeded expectations.
Susan Walsh
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AP
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