The government bureaucrat driving my family toward homelessness

I served five years in the Marine Corps, and I have worked hard to protect my country and support my family. For years, I scrimped and saved to buy my home — doing all that a responsible community member and father should. But the big banks were reckless, and due to their recklessness home values plummeted and now my family is in trouble.
 
{mosads}There is one person who is driving my family toward homelessness: a bureaucrat named Edward DeMarco who was hired by the Bush administration and now serves as Acting Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.  

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae own or guarantee more than half of the mortgages in the United States. As government-sponsored agencies, they should be leading the charge to help families like mine prevent foreclosures, which would fix the mortgage crisis and help the economy recover. But rather than helping hardworking people like me, who have played by the rules and done what was asked of them, Edward DeMarco is helping big banks. He is blocking requests by members of Congress and President Obama to allow Fannie and Freddie to help struggling homeowners like me who need our mortgages recalibrated to their fair market value. This is true even though we as taxpayers are the ones who bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after their financial demise.
 
With another 8-10 million families expected to go into foreclosure in the coming years, more families could fall victim to a fate similar to mine.  

Doesn’t it make more sense to keep a hardworking family in their home at a lower mortgage than to foreclose and sell the home to someone else for pennies on the dollar? Doesn’t it make more sense to give homeowners a fair loan than to bulldoze empty properties as cities like Baltimore and Cleveland have done?

According to The New Bottom Line report, “The Win/Win Solution,” resetting mortgages at fair market value is the best way to get our economy moving again — it would create an estimated 1 million jobs. Turning housing around would also restore public services that were cut due to declining city and state revenue caused by the housing downturn. Schools and health care would face fewer cuts, which would mean a better quality of life for all of us.

President Obama says he wants to reset the housing market. If he’s serious, and wants to make his recently announced federal investigation into the big banks’ mortgage fraud meaningful and fight for the 99 percent, he must make mortgage principal reduction a cornerstone of his economic agenda. The only way to do that is to get rid of the man standing in the way — Edward DeMarco — and replace him with someone who will be a champion for homeowners like me.

But Edward DeMarco has proven that he isn’t interested in helping struggling homeowners. It doesn’t matter that economists across the political spectrum, like Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, former Economic Adviser to President Obama Lawrence Summers and Google Chief Economist Hal Varian have agreed that writing down principal is the way to reset the housing market, address the mortgage crisis and put the economy back on track. DeMarco just won’t do it.

Edward DeMarco has said that writing down principal would cost taxpayers money. But independent experts who’ve looked at the situation say that’s not true. Allowing us to refinance for the true value of our homes would save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — and ultimately taxpayers — more than $20 billion by keeping more families current on their mortgage payments and preventing foreclosures that depress housing prices and the economy.

My children should be focused on their homework, not worrying about where they are going to live. But one misguided man is standing in the way. President Obama needs to clean house at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. He should remove Ed DeMarco and replace him with a leader who will do what it takes to keep responsible families in their homes and resolve the housing crisis so our economy can recover.

Arturo de los Santos is a member of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), a multi-racial, democratic, non-profit community organization building power in low to moderate income neighborhoods to stand and fight for social, economic and racial justice. ACCE is a member of The New Bottom Line, a growing movement fueled by a coalition of community organizations, congregations, and individuals working together to challenge established big bank interests on behalf of struggling and middle-class communities.