Affordable Housing Institute : US

Twenty years back, when Wendy’s was making a name for itself in hamburgers, its advertising agency hit upon a brilliant ad campaign to contrast real hamburger (Where’s the beef?) with mystery meat. 
 

“Where’s the beef?”
 
Entering an antiseptic fast-food eatery (echoes of Colonel Sanders) with red-and-white checkerboard floor tiles and counter help decked out in orange […]

Now that Los Angeles has acquiesced in a judicial decision forbidding the city from rousting vagrants, will the city become a magnet for America’s homeless? 
 

Desperately seeking Los Angeles
 
As I posted nearly two years ago, Los Angeles is already America’s homeless capital.  Homelessness flourishes in temperate climates and is drawn to cities, whose excess wealth creates […]

“Restructuring my loan — it was horrible, Xena!”
 
With all the travails of delinquent borrowers in the subprime mess, you’d think that losing one’s home to foreclosure would be the only financial bullet one might have to dodge —
 

Glad I avoided foreclosure
 
— and that, if by some good fortune the borrower was able to modify the loan, […]

Common sense is not so common. — Voltaire
 
Showing eminent common sense, and uncannily echoing AHI’s pre-default recapitalization program, Countrywide Financial (which has been taking a beating lately, in the press and stock market), is making moves to pre-empt a wave of destabilizing defaults that would otherwise likely occur upon mortgage resets, by offering prepackaged modifications.
 

Eye […]

[Previous Months in Review available here: Aug 07, Jul 07, Jun 07, May 07,  Apr 07, Mar 07, Feb 07, Jan 07;]
 

There I was, one September morn, reading a blog post
 
During September, I decided that the appropriate noun to describe subprime was ‘mess.’  
 

We’re all subprime stakeholders here
 
It’s not exactly a scandal — which requires […]