4) African American organizations, like NID, can perform and outperform their counterparts in serving all Americans in crisis or in need of quality housing and housing counseling services.
Foreclosure Prevention, Making Home Affordable, HAMP, and African Americans NID alone has assisted more the 40,000 families in preventing foreclosure since 2009. NID’s data and the research show that race, ethnicity, gender, and income have very little impact on homeowners’ direct successful participation in the Making Home Affordable-HAMP Program. The reason: NID and others who were funded by the federal government to intervene and serve African American families and communities. Nevertheless, NID’s experience and data show that without the specific mandate of Congress to serve the African American community under HAMP, African Americans, Hispanics, women, and low-income people would not at least have been served in the same proportion as Whites, non-Hispanics, men, and higher-income people. Among racial groups, African Americans’ share of direct HAMP activity exceeds its share of candidate borrowers at every stage but the last. For them, the positive differentials they obtain at application and trial and permanent modification stages outweigh the single small negative differential in terms of sustaining modifications. Asians’ positive or neutral shares relative to Whites at every stage produce an overall positive position. Among the smaller racial groups, American Indians and Alaska Natives have positive or neutral experience compared to Whites at each state except review of eligibility for trails, and that single disadvantage is fully offset by just their positive position in trail approvals among eligible applicants for loan modifications. People of more than one race come very close to balancing between positives and negatives. Hispanics present a slightly more mixed picture in terms of direct HAMP benefits than do populations by race. Among HAMP-eligible homeowners, their percentages of trail and permanent modifications approved are modestly smaller than for non-Hispanics. But they are more likely to be eligible, and they enter the application system more than in proportion to their share of troubled loans. Overall, Hispanics have a slender positive margin in HAMP participation through its multiple steps compared to non-Hispanics. As a direct result of NID and other efforts, African Americans obtain more help from HAMP then do Whites in modification size (reduced payments) and in curing delinquencies and foreclosures but less help in halting foreclosure processes once begun and in sustaining cures of defaults. African Americans do benefit from HAMP in all but one of those cases, but the gains are smaller than for Whites. Hence, there needs to be greater advocacy focus and government policy focus on servicers and halting foreclosure processes once begun under HAMP. Ray Carlisle, President, Jacqueline Carlisle, Executive Director of NID-Housing Counseling Agency
National Society of Real Estate Appraisers Valuation (NSREA) Views The first issue that is impacting the valuation process in urban and suburban America is based on the growth in FHA mortgages over the past five years and the underutilization of a diversified appraisal panel. According FHA policy there is to be at least 10 percent of the appraisal completed by women and/or minorities. Based on FHA’s website that reports the lenders’ use of women and/ or minorities, the policy has not been fulfilled for years and has also not been addressed by FHA. 33