Long Silver John

Obama's Housing Fix Falls Flat

As a lawyer, I handled a Loan Modification for a neighbor on a pro bono basis. It took about 4-5 months and repeated phone calls, followed by 3 letters from me in one week, to get the bank focused on it. Finally, the paperwork came through and the homeowner was able to reduce payments by $1,200 a month for five years. It was tough slogging and I'm only surprised that 13,000 have been modified given those procedural obstacles.