Government Now Needs a "No Homeowner Left Behind" Program!

I was recently reading an article on the 'Making Home Affordable' program that stated that the Obama administration is going to "encourage" lenders to do a better job assisting distressed homeowners save their home and stay out of foreclosure.

It looks like the finance industry as a whole will not be getting a passing grade on their implementation of the plan that was to have kept millions out of foreclosure. There is a report coming out soon that names the lenders who have failed to aggressively implement the administration's plan for homeowners and it's well known that two biggies in the loan arena, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are going to be named in it.

The 31 participating financial institutions in the mortgage modification plan have received billions in federal bailout money and are sensitive about their public image, as they should be.

It is also reported that Freddie Mac will be doing random audits to see if borrowers are being informed that they qualify for the program, and also see if homeowners who are trying to participate are being improperly denied.

Michael Barr with the Treasury said, "We want to go faster. There are a bunch of servicers that are lacking in performance. They have to lift their game."

The 'Making Home Affordable' plan was intended to help millions of financially distressed homeowners modify their loans and lower their payments. But although it has been picking up some speed recently, the fact is that since March only 200,000 are on now in the program.

The issue is that this new program is not easy for the lenders to implement and they must not see it as being *that* much better for them, financially, than simply foreclosing and reselling the properties.

In the meantime foreclosures are continuing as predicted. There are 1.5 million American households that received a foreclosure-related notice in the first six months of this year, and so it's not hard to see who needs help. The problem is the sheer magnitude of the number who should be helped by this program. And out of the 1.5 million it's anyone's guess as to how many of those actually qualify! Many don't because they are so far out of their depth that they don't meet the standards for acceptance.

Now it's time to get the financial institutions to act. Like the school program, 'No Child Left Behind' we now need to ensure that no homeowner who actually qualifies for the mortgage modification program gets missed. Too many people who should have been helped by the government programs have lost their homes.