GOP Candidates Skirt Solutions to Housing Issues

• Oct 19th 2011

by Shilpi Paul

Despite being in Nevada, one of the states hit hardest by the housing crisis, GOP presidential candidates did not have much to offer in the way of solutions to the housing crisis during last night’s debate, The Wall Street Journal reported. Even with 60 percent of homeowners in Nevada underwater on their mortgages, the candidates avoided stating any concrete plans for solutions to the crisis.

The Wall Street Journal on why that was the case:

Most of the solutions to help the housing markets are political losers. They involve painful trade-offs. For example:

• Writing down loan balances for underwater borrowers is expensive and would reward some homeowners who have made irresponsible choices, even if it speeds up the de-leveraging process.
• Relaxing lending standards so it’s easier for more Americans, including investors, to buy homes would inevitably lead the government to take on more risk, and possibly bear more losses.
• Especially in hard-hit housing markets (and swing states) like Nevada, Florida, and Ohio, doing nothing has less appeal than it did one year ago because the weak housing market remains a growing drag on economic growth.

While quiet on the question Tuesday night, Mitt Romney did offer his opinion to the Las Vegas Review-Journal earlier this week of how the issue of foreclosures should be handled.

“Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom,” Romney said. “Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up.”

Last month, UrbanTurf wrote about Project Rebuild, President Obama’s plan to appropriate $15 billion in funds to rehab foreclosed homes and businesses.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/gop_debaters_skirt_housing_crisis/4384.