Latest news
- France begins eviction of 650 migrants from Calais camps
- Anti-eviction group creates crowdsourcing map for stories of displacement
- More foreclosures, more middle-aged suicides, study finds
- When it comes to hosting the Olympics, more cities are saying, ‘Hold that thought.’
- European leaders urged to end plight of 600,000 stateless people
Latest from the collection
- Raquel Rolnik’s mandate ends. Leilani Farha is the new rapporteur. – Newsletter #47
- Roots and Branches
- New Materials on Security of Tenure in Several Languages – Newsletter #46
- Guide: Guiding principles on security of tenure for the urban poor
- Address acute housing crisis – Special rapporteur on adequate housing
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América do Norte
In Wyoming, US, Many Jobs but No Place to Call Home
As in any other place in the country, many homeless people in Wyoming have lived on the streets for years or suffer from mental illness or drug and alcohol addictions. But social service workers say they have seen a growing number of economic migrants from Florida and Michigan, Wisconsin and California, with nowhere to settle.
Don’t Skimp on Sandy Aid
New York Times Editorial
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey made an impassioned pitch on Monday to his fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote on Tuesday for almost $50 billion in Hurricane Sandy disaster relief. “New Jersey does not expect anything more than what was done for Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi in Katrina, and what was done in Joplin, Mo., what was done in the floods in Iowa. We don’t expect anything more than that, but we will not accept anything less,” Mr. Christie said.
It is now more than 11 weeks after the hurricane severely damaged a huge swath of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, yet these states are still waiting for enough federal aid to repair and rebuild housing, businesses and transportation systems that were destroyed by the storm.
The Foreclosure Fiasco
It’s been five days since Jessica Silver-Greenberg’s article on the latest bank settlement was posted on The New York Times’s Web site. I’m still shaking my head. Her “story behind the story” of the $8.5 billion settlement between federal bank regulators and 10 banks over their foreclosure misdeeds illustrates just about everything that is wrong with the way the government has handled the Great Foreclosure Crisis. Shall we count the ways?
Life in the Red
The usual explanations for reckless borrowing focus on people’s character, or social norms that promote free spending and instant gratification. But recent research has shown that scarcity by itself is enough to cause this kind of financial self-sabotage.
“When we put people in situations of scarcity in experiments, they get into poverty traps,” said Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. “They borrow at high interest rates that hurt them, in ways they knew to avoid when there was less scarcity.”
The Champagne of Housing Rights: France’s Enforceable Right to Housing and Lessons for U.S. Advocates
In the October edition of the Northeastern University Law Journal, Eric S. Tars, Julia Lum and E. Kieran Paul wrote an article about the right to housing in France and its lessons that can be applied at the United States of America. Nowadays, the US faces a serious homelessness crisis and the authors emphasize the need to address this issue.
Progress on Mortgage Regulations
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued long-awaited rules on mortgage lending that should help protect home buyers and the global financial system from a repeat of the subprime disaster. But the rules, which were announced on Thursday and go into effect next year, include some features that could hurt lower-income borrowers.
Predatory lending was a leading cause of the housing bubble, the spike in foreclosures and the failure of large financial institutions. It saddled borrowers with too much debt and left investors with big losses. Congress created the consumer bureau in large part to make sure all that never happened again.
Bank Deal Ends Flawed Reviews of Foreclosures in the US
Federal banking regulators are trumpeting an $8.5 billion settlement this week with 10 banks as quick justice for aggrieved homeowners, but the deal is actually a way to quietly paper over a deeply flawed review of foreclosed loans across America, according to current and former regulators and consultants.
To avoid criticism as the review stalled and consultants collected more than $1 billion in fees, the regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, abandoned the effort after examining a sliver of nearly four million loans in foreclosure, the regulators and consultants said.
Still Waiting for Sandy Relief
Republicans haven’t made it easy for the Northeast to get the $60.4 billion in aid it needs to recover from Hurricane Sandy. They have objected to the amount — which is considerably less than the $82 billion requested by the region’s governors — and tried to slash it. They have demanded that $3.4 billion of the aid for flood control be offset by spending cuts in other programs. And in the Senate, as on virtually all bills, they filibustered the aid package proposed by President Obama.
Jobless homeowners can apply for mortgage relief in California, US
Jobless benefits could end for almost 30,000 San Diegans at the start of the New Year if President Obama and Congress don’t act. But some of those residents, if they move quickly, could qualify for mortgage aid from the state. Keep Your Home California is a $2 billion program that helps keep struggling homeowners in their properties. It catches them up on mortgage payments, helps them relocate after completing short sales and cuts their principal balances.
State officials have urged certain out-of-work borrowers to apply for a slice of the program that offers up to $3,000 a month in mortgage aid for a maximum of nine months. Since unemployment benefits could end in the New Year, borrowers must apply before this month ends, said Di Richardson, the program’s director.