For over a year, I’ve been fighting with a U.S. bank to get my brother’s home loan modified under the FHA-HAMP program, which was enacted by congress to save homeowners from foreclosure in the wake of the recent economic crisis.
My brother is not a flipper and he did not buy outside his means. He purchased a small house for himself, his wife, and his two children in a lower-middle class, semi-rural Connecticut area. At the time, he was employed as a journeyman in a union shop working at least full time and making a comfortable living. His wife was taking care of their children and working one-off and part time jobs.
Then AIG. And Lehman Brothers. And Indymac. And WAMU. And then the bottom started to fall out of the housing market. As everyone knows now, the effect of that collapse spread from the center and rippled through the country.
As it did, the economy contracted. Banks stopped lending. Spending slowed. Salaries plateaued while prices for food and consumer goods rose. Companies began reducing the workforce. Homeowners started struggling to conserve their dwindling resources. New construction slowed and then stopped in many areas.
And as the construction industry declined, so did my brother’s ability to make a living. Now, he’s barely scraping by.
My brother is the homeowner that HAMP was designed to help. Through absolutely no fault of his own, he is temporarily unable to make a living in what is generally a reliable American industry.
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