Snap-O Fact #95

Things move so fast today that things that happened 3 years ago are completely forgotten or at a minimum relegated to the status of trivia. Today's SNAP-FACT is a reminder that President Obama has been actively concerned and active in the housing crisis and on the side of the middle class and the working poor from the beginning.  In 2009, President Obama authorized the Housing Rescue Plan with $275 billion and new FHA residential housing guarantees to help homeowners afford to remain in their homes as well as to prevent mortgage and high interest rates from the banks.

The original intention of the plan was to prevent the banks from taking advantage of homeowners by using complicated “tricky” terms and conditions in contracts. As President Obama has stated his, “ plan will not save every home, but it will give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild.”

According to The New York Times at the time, the plan “would assist about four million people who are at risk of losing their homes. It would provide incentives to lenders who alter the terms of loans to make them affordable for the troubled borrowers. A third component would try to increase the credit available for mortgages in general by giving $200 billion of additional financial backing to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”