Barney Frank Floats Mortgage Assistance for Unemployed Homeowners Idea.

So says story HERE.

Text of Main Street TARP legislation (H. R. 3766) referred to in story is HERE, Section 3 has language on this proposal (which amends dormant 1970's era legislation).

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Barney Frank Wants to Be HUD Secretary?

Barney Frank (my fav member of Congress) has a new book coming out later this month. WSJ story HERE , using The Hill as source, says after serving a couple of more years, Barney would like to be HUD Secretary.

My advice: Be careful what you wish for, Barney.

(I have already ordered my copy of The Story of America's Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman from Amazon. Link to book on Powell's website is HERE).

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

House Financial Services Posts Congressional Oversight Panel Status Report on Foreclosure Crisis.

Dated March 6th, it's posted HERE. (198 pages).

This is Congressional mandated panel (includes Elizabeth Warren) required as part of TARP.

Wednesday House Financial Services Hearing:Mortgage Lending Reform-A Comprehensive Review of the American Mortgage System.

Web page for hearing is HERE.

Barney Frank's Chief of Staff to Take HUD Congressional Relations Job.

Boston Globe story HERE.

Revised Mortgage Bankruptcy Bill (with other provisions) Referred to House Committees.

A revised mortgage bankruptcy bill has been introduced in the House and referred to Judiciary, Financial Services, and VA Committees.

Former bill was H.R. 200, marked up bill is now H.R. 1106 and it's web page is HERE.

(Some other loan modification provisions and VA/FHA changes are also included in the bill).

House Hearing Tuesday Feb 24th: Are Mortgage Servicers Assisting Borrowers with Unaffordable Mortgages?

House Financial Services Subcommittee hearing website is HERE.

Chair Frank Highlights Housing Provisions of Recovery Bill.

Short direct summary HERE.

But for some reason, it doesn't include several items including public housing , NAHSDA, lead abatement/healthy homes, or Section 8 project based funding. Go figure.

House Financial Services Committee Hearing Includes HOPE for Homeowners Program Revisions.

House hearing page is HERE.

Bill that would change the Hope for Homeowners H.R. 703.

HUD testimony at the hearing is HERE.

Video: Overlooked House Colloquy Supports TARP Purchase of HFA Mortgage Revenue Bonds.

Check out the C-SPAN Flash video HERE from House floor on January 14th.

Note that this would include ability to purchase HFA revenue bonds for subprime refinance loans, as authorized by summer 2008 federal housing legislation: Public Law 110-289, Section 3021(b)] .

House Hearing: Priorities for TARP II.

The House Financial Services held a hearing on January 13th on this subject.

I created a PDF HERE with all of the witness testimony. (About 6.5MB's).

The Committee has also created a special TARP documents page HERE which I would suggest you bookmark; I have added link in right pane of my blog.

[Advice: 1. Don't print the entire document, its 150 pages. 2.You can find individual testimony by selecting bookmarks in left pane. If you click on blue underlined links in right pane on the first page, you will download a second copy of a document already in this PDF).

Frank TARP Reform Bill Includes Several Housing Provisions.

House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank released a version of a TARP reform bill that would guide use of the remaining $350 Billion that requires Congressional approval.

The Thomas page for the bill text (H.R. 384) is HERE. (I'd suggest bookmarking so you can track as bill makes it way through Congress).

The page HERE is a shorter summary of the various Titles of the bill.

Title II (Foreclosure Relief) , Title V (HOPE for Homeowners revisions) and Title VI (Home buyer Stimulus) contain the housing provisions. I have copied and pasted provisions from the summary into a PDF file HERE.

House Hearing on FHA Oversight of Lenders; FHA Official Testifies in Opposition to Cramdown Bill.

House Financial Services held hearing on this subject this morning. Hearing page is HERE.

Government Executive news story is HERE. It says that HUD SF Assistant Secretary testified that HUD continues to opposed cram down legislation. (I would have hated to be defending that position at the hearing, it seems highly likely that view is going to be changed after January 20th?).

C-SPAN has page for hearing HERE, but video is not yet posted as of 4 PM PST.

Barney Frank: US Should Buy Low Income Housing Tax Credits as Part of Stimulus.

Boston Globe story HERE.

Strange world where government buys tax credits it issues, no? In other times this would be known as an appropriation. Jobs, jobs, jobs is only rationale for this proposal I can see.

Video, Housing Forum: Includes Barney Frank's Remarks, and Panel on Mortgage Regulation.

Webcasts of different panels from National Housing Forum held earlier this week are available from Office of Thrift Supervision HERE.

Chair Frank's luncheon remarks are HERE

Video of panel on Mortgage Regulation at end of day (Windows version) is HERE.

Video: Barney Frank at Urban Land Institute Conference.

Video from C-SPAN is HERE. Includes discussion of both homeownership and rental housing.

If video doesn't launch directly from link above, your pop up blocker may be reason--just click on Flash logo in right side of website and it should then launch.

(Note that video window includes search tool to allow you to search within video for specific term within video).

Senate Banking Committee on Track to Pass Version of FHA/GSE Reform Today.

On Monday Chair Chris Dodd of Senate Banking Committee announced agreement on FHA/ GSE reform bill prior to markup session scheduled for this morning.

The principal changes from House bill appears to be GSE payment of costs for new FHA refinancing program from GSE housing trust fund proceeds and a reduction in program cost to $500 million vs. $1.7 billion in House bill; see Congress Daily news story HERE. Claim is that 500,000 families will avoid foreclosure, identical to House bill.

House Financial Services Chair Barney Frank indicates in Reuters news story HERE that there will be a fight over the use of housing trust fund proceeds for this purpose.

Managers amendment HERE includes the text of changes from earlier Senate version of the bill.

I expect once bill passes Senate Banking Committee more details will emerge. Even without amendments, I note for example that Title VI of the managers markup includes a nationwide Mortgage Licensing Act provision that I don't recall seeing in other versions of the bill.

When full Senate would vote on a Senate version of the bill and when conference with House would occur are unknown at this time.

Web Video: Barney Frank Speaking to National Association of Realtors.

The always entertaining Chair of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank spoke yesterday to a mid year legislative meeting of the National Association of Realtors.

Broadcast by C-SPAN, the speech can be viewed on line using either the Flash or Microsoft Windows Median player in the right pane of a C-SPAN website HERE.

NY Times Profile of Barney Frank.

Profile of my favorite, and the funniest and one of the smartest members of Congress, House Financial Services Chair Barney Frank is HERE. Excerpt:

"When Representative Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, criticized a component of the housing bill that would give money to local governments to buy and repair foreclosed properties, saying it would not protect homeowners from foreclosure, Mr. Frank fired back that preventing foreclosures was the goal of a different bill."

“The notion that this bill doesn’t keep people out of foreclosure is true,” he said. “It doesn’t combat global warming. It doesn’t get troops out of Iraq. It won’t help me lose weight. There are a lot of things this bill won’t do that I very much want to do. None of them are a reason to vote against a bill that doesn’t do what it doesn’t say it’s going to do but does what it does. What it does is go to the aid of cities that have been victimized.”

Example: Video and Transcript of Barney Frank on Housing Bills.

In the pane to the right of the blog is a link to C-SPAN video of Congressional sessions that I suspect many readers have never used (Shame on you, your all going to "H-E, double L" as my mom used to say). BTW-Happy Mothers Day to all you mothers out there.

As an example of what is available from C-Span, HERE is a link to all of the comments of Barney Frank, the Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, on May 8th, the day that major housing legislation was passed by the full House.

Within the overall link above, one can select individual occasions on that day the Chair Frank spoke, and you will see not only the video , but also a transcript of what was said from the Congressional Record.

If you want to see ALL speakers on a given day, simply click on a date in the calendar on the left side of this C-SPAN website and a alpha list of speakers will appear. Who knew that Congressman Wu was the ONLY Oregon Representative [Greg Walden spoke on another bill] to speak to the housing bills on that day? See what Wu had to say HERE.