May 30, 2011
In response to my friend, Jared Bernstein, responding to Paul Krugman, let me point out that there was a real simple, non-bureaucratic way in which to allow underwater homeowners to stay in their home and get out from under their crushing mortgage burden.
If we just gave them the option of staying in their home paying the market rent, post foreclosure, it would immediately give them housing security and relieve them of the prospect of paying a crushing mortgage debt. This requires no taxpayer dollars, no government bureaucracy, nor moral harzard, and it would have given immediate relief. This was good enough for conservatives like Desmond Lachmon at the American Enterprise Institute and Andrew Samwick, but not for the folks in the Obama administration.
I can see why people who work for the banks opposed right to rent, but not why anyone else would.
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