Why Did Obama Hold Back Hundreds of Billions In Housing Aid? | Black Agenda Report

Why Did Obama Hold Back Hundreds of Billions In Housing Aid?

12 Sep 2012

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The Obama housing policy has been to let the banks handle the crisis however they see fit, while refusing to spend hundreds of billions authorized by Congress for housing relief. Protestors keep calling for the head of Edward Demarco, of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, for failing to save underwater homeowners. But Demarco is only carrying out Obama’s housing policies.

Why Is Barack Obama Holding Back Hundreds of Billions In Housing Aid?

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“The Obama administration refused to spend hundreds of billions allocated by Congress for housing relief, until the program expired in 2010.”

Protesters associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement charge the housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with refusing to lower the mortgage principles on 15 million homeowners who are underwater, their houses worth less than what they owe. The problem, say these activists, is Edward Demarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The protesters, including Occupy Our Homes and Right to the City, have been careful to frame Demarco as the problem; they’ve been calling for his head for many months. But Demarco is just a cog in a very big wheel, a career civil servant who is faithfully carrying out his president’s housing policies. Demarco deserves to be demonized, but President Obama is the real villain, here.

Although he oversaw the biggest bank bailout in U.S. history, Barack Obama has long rejected any bailout of homeowners. Before the financial meltdown, back in early 2008, candidate Obama opposed any form of moratorium on home foreclosures, putting him to the right of candidate John Edwards, who wanted a mandatory halt to foreclosures, and Hillary Clinton, who favored a voluntary moratorium. In the first two years of his presidency, it was Obama, not the minority Republicans, who stood in the way of a bailout of homeowners, even as his administration and the Federal Reserve funneled trillions of dollars to Wall Street. As reported in the New York Times, last month, the Obama administration refused to spend hundreds of billions allocated by Congress for housing relief, until the program expired in 2010. The money was just sitting there, unspent – no Republicans were blocking it – while five million families lost their homes.

“Demarco deserves to be demonized, but President Obama is the real villain, here.”

According to the Times story, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Obama that he would not spend money on housing even if another $100 billion was available. Geithner and Obama flouted the specific will of Congress, refusing to come to the aid of those populations and regions most affected by the housing collapse. Almost $6.7 billion dollars set aside for the Hardest Hit Program sat idle in Treasury Department accounts for two years, because Geithner managed to spend only three percent of the money.

This was no accident or oversight, but deliberate and consistent Obama administration policy to leave the housing crisis for the banks to deal with in ways they saw fit. Federal intervention might upset the banks’ careful calibrations of how many families to dispossess, how many houses to put back on the market – and when – in order to keep the banks’ books looking healthy. It was never in the cards that the Obama team would support widespread reductions in mortgage principles. Their job, as they saw it, was to protect the bankers’ bottom lines, and to hell with the millions of Americans – disproportionately Black and brown – who got thrown into the street.

Yet, many activists, waving the Occupy Wall Street banner, insist that a bureaucrat named Edward Demarco is the devil behind all of this suffering. Even in protest, they can’t bring themselves to tell the whole truth – the truth that the people most need to know: that President Obama has callously allowed millions to be made homeless in his steadfast service to Wall Street.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

listen

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20120912_gf_Housing.mp3

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Real Estate Development and the Scarcity of Affordable Housing in New York City
11 Nov 2022
Leah Goodridge is an attorney, housing advocate, and member of the New York City Planning Commission. She is a former member of the Rent Guidelines Board which sets the rents for regulated apartments…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Formerly Convicted Persons Deprived of Voting Rights in Florida
11 Nov 2022
Patrick Berry is a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, where he focuses on voting rights restoration and promoting fair, diverse, and impartial courts. He joins us from New York to…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
2022 Midterm Elections
11 Nov 2022
As the midterm election approached, the charge of Russian election interference re-emerged. Margaret Kimberley discussed that and election predictions with Dr. Wilmer Leon and Garland Nixon on their…
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
For African/Black Working Class and Colonized Peoples, Midterm Elections in the U.S. Offer No Relief from War, Repression and Capitalist Misery
09 Nov 2022
The 50 year old neo-liberal agenda explains why political choices in this country provide little change that benefits the masses of people. The recent midterm election results will not bring about an…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Why Democrats Don't Win The Way They Should
09 Nov 2022
The people prefer the initiatives which democrtatic party leadership claim to support. But their interests are those of the oligarchy and not of the voters. Slim margins of legislative victory…