Monday, March 23, 2009 | 11:09 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today President Barack Obama’s housing rescue plan doesn’t go far enough to help the many Nevadans who are underwater on their mortgages.
Reid called on Sen. Kent Conrad, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, to include a housing reserve fund in the upcoming fiscal 2010 budget to help homeowners in distress.
“The refinancing program developed by the Treasury Department, while very helpful in many parts of the country, will leave out too many Nevadans because their loan-to-value ratio is too high to qualify,” Reid wrote in a letter to Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat.
“Most of these Nevadans have done nothing wrong,” Reid wrote. “Yet now they find themselves in severe financial distress with no assistance available, even while their tax dollars are being used to bail out many of the financial institutions that created this crisis. This is deeply unfair and wrong.”
Reid said the reserve fund should accommodate various homeowner assistance initiatives – including giving bankruptcy courts the authority to write down mortgages on primary homes, something now only available to owners of vacation properties or second homes.
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