High-Income Texans Find Homes in Public Housing
Deep in the heart of rural, southeast Texas, a family living in public housing meant for low-income families has a total household income of $285,971 a year.  In Olney, Texas — near Wichita Falls — a family receiving taxpayer subsidies to pay rent makes $227,709, while another family residing in public housing in Pineland on the eastern edge of the state makes $184,499.

Obama Nominates Castro In Spite of Texas HUD Scandal
President Barrack Obama nominated San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development on May 23^rd in spite of his city’s alleged misuse of funds from that same federal department. The Post piled a lot of praise on the back of San Antonio’s youngest ever elected mayor, but completely failed to mention the brewing scandal in San Antonio’s financial relationship with the very department Castro is now nominated to head.

Castro dealing with scandal-laden HUD
When the inspector general for the Department of Housing and Urban Development scolded the federal agency this summer for letting 25,000 “over income” families reside in public housing — more than 1,000 of them in Texas — HUD initially fought back. Castro has challenges ahead, illustrated by a tally presented by Montoya in June: 106 arrests; 133 indictments or charges; and 179 convictions, plea bargains or diversions related to agency programs — in a six-month period.

HUD FEATURE: 1981 – 2015 HUD’s Hallmark of Federal Policy – 35-Years of Housing Scandal and Billions in Taxpayer Waste
CATO INSTITUTE - DOWNSIZING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Cisneros planted another seed for the housing bubble and its subsequent burst by putting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under constant pressure to facilitate more lending to "underserved" markets. While Cisneros's own HUD administration acknowledged that mortgages financed by Fannie and Freddie in "underserved" areas have a higher risk of default, it did not see that "there need be any safety and soundness impediment" to the policy. It was under Cisneros's direction that HUD agreed to allow Fannie and Freddie credit toward its "affordable housing" targets by buying subprime mortgages. The recent meltdown in the U.S. housing and financial markets makes it crucially important to understand the distortions created by HUD's programs and the political drivers of its decision-making. HUD policies played an important role in the meltdown, and this essay sheds light on why some of HUD's bad policies were put in place.

Don’t give homebuilders a pass to cut corners on construction
We are the unlucky ones who bought homes with expensive and dangerous construction defects — crumbling foundations, structurally deficient walls, leaky roofs and more. We needed to have legal options to hold our builders responsible for making us whole again.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Breaking news: CFPB study finds that mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses undermine consumers' rights by limiting class actions... The Bureau’s report also found that more than 75 percent of consumers surveyed did not know whether they were subject to an arbitration clause in their agreements with their financial service providers, and fewer than 7 percent of those covered by arbitration clauses realized that the clauses restricted their ability to sue in court.

Tyranny of the Arbitrators - And the End of Small Claims Court
After a minor banking dispute in 2010 forced me to file a small claim, Citibank removed my small claim to private arbitration against my objections and in violation of my agreements and the arbitrator’s rules.I am sharing my story to help others... Citibank removed my small claim to arbitration to avoid an undesirable but public outcome in small claims court — knowing full well the depth of the hole it was putting me in.

Foreclosure to Home Free, as 5-Year Clock Expires
In September, Susan Rodolfi celebrated an unusual anniversary: five years of missed mortgage payments. She is like a ghost of the housing market’s painful past, one of thousands of Americans who have skipped years of mortgage payments and are still living in their homes.

New Jersey Man Sues Builders Over $1.6 Million 'Uninhabitable'  
When the house in Florham Park, New Jersey, was completed in 2007, Humayun Akhtar, 66, discovered the home’s interior and exterior had cracks and that the house was “sliding down the hill it was built on,” he told ABC News today. The house is “unrepaired and uninhabitable,” according to court findings, which added the soil the home was built on was “of insufficient load-bearing capacity to hold the building.”

Tweets by Public Citizen

Mel Watt and Julian Castro announce housing policy changes
FHFA continues to evaluate ways to refine and improve the loss mitigation and foreclosure prevention policies at the Enterprises, because we understand that many individuals and families are still facing the possibility of foreclosure and are looking for alternatives to stay in their homes." ....Compass Point listed the biggest winners of this kind of credit box expansion as originators, private mortgage insurers and home builders. ...challenging the regulators to ease the incredibly strict underwriting standards now required to originate a mortgage loan.

HOA homeowners oppose construction defects legislation  
“Senator Ulibarri is about to introduce a bill that should be called the ‘Horrors of Homeownership Act,’” said Molly Foley-Healy, chair of CLAC. “Senator Ulibarri’s stated goal is to create more affordable housing, but this bill has nothing to do with affordable housing. Instead, it hurts the very people he said he wanted to help. It effectively blocks homeowners from holding builders responsible for their shoddy construction and leaves homeowners living in HOAs to pick up the tab for repairing the defects.”