Where are they to go?

Recently I've been working to help a bunch of people who have fallen victim to the ravages of the current housing crisis. Most, through no real fault of their own hit some bump in life's road and ended up losing their home to foreclosure. Now they are out looking for a place to live.

The cruel second shoe that oft times drops is the requirement, even to rent a home, for a credit report, in addition to other background information. Most of them have crappy credit reports; so now, they are again in danger of being denied a place to live, because for their earlier mistakes. I guess I can't blame the owners of the rental units for being cautious; especially if someone displays a history of being unable to live up to financial obligations; however, many of these folks have turned things around and are now quite capable and ready to meet new rental requirements, maybe even ownership requirement. The issue is that their credit is trashed for at least 3 years, if they went through a foreclosure, even longer if they chose to declare bankruptcy.

What are they to do - go live in a cardboard box under an overpass for 3 years? I think not and I certainly hope not. right now all of the bailout efforts are aimed at triage - stopping the bleeding in the financial sector and slowing or stopping future foreclosures. The large group of people who have already been foreclosed has been temporarily forgotten. I can almost guarantee you that this will not last. Although some Republican politicians in Michigan wanted to focus on disenfranchising those people for the coming election, the majority of politicians will eventually turn a sympathetic ear to this group and laws will be enacted to help them, too. As a group they are being discriminated against and that will eventually be righted.

What could we do to help them and yet not stomp all over the rights of the property owners? I suppose there cold be some form of rent guarantee program that would be more or less an extension of programs that already exist for low-income families in some urban zones. Since the government is going to end up owning most of the foreclosed homes, I suppose they could offer them up at reduced rental rates to these people - a sort of subsidized housing program like they already run in many cities. whatever it end up being it will all be about money - it always is.

The point is that, before this mess is all over, we will have about 6-10 Million families that have lost their hoes and are out on the street looking for housing and who have bad credit reports, due to the foreclosures on their old homes. As a part of any rescue/bailout plan, we need to figure out more than just how to save a few banks on Wall Street; we need to figure out how to save a few million people on Main Street.