2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumDo people know about Hillary's $10,000 for a house down payment plan?
I hadn't heard this one, but Hillary was on CNN in a Harlem senior center this morning talking about her proposal to give $10,000 as a match to help young people come up with the down payment on a house. I googled it and it is not something she just came up with this morning.
http://cnycn.org/2016/02/clinton-plan-to-help-potential-home-buyers-could-benefit-working-class-new-yorkers/
<Clinton is proposing to support potential homeowners in their efforts to save for down payments with new initiatives for underserved communities that would match up to $10,000 in savings. The programs would apply to those homeowners who earn less than the area median income.
Since down payments are often the biggest obstacle to homeownership, this matching program would be a welcome addition to the extremely limited landscape of financial assistance currently available to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers seeking to become homeowners and to build wealth.
Right now, the city provides grants of up to $15,000 for down payment assistance through the HomeFirst program, which sets eligibility at 80% of area median income or about $62,000 for a family of three. But in the citys hotly contested real estate market, even $15,000 is too little, and even families that earn more struggle to save for down payments.
For instance, at the low end of the market in the Bronx, the median cost of a single-family home in 2015 was $360,000, according to the Department of Finance. If the would-be homeowner were to pay the recommended 20% down payment, the buyer would need to have $72,000 in pocket. That means even middle-income would-be homeowners who could afford monthly payments are priced out of the market by those with enough cash on hand to pay out the steep down payments.
So even if Clintons proposals were enacted, in an overheated market like New York City, the would-be low-income or moderate-income home buyer would still be strained to come up with enough cash to afford the down payment.>
Let's restart George W. Bush's "ownership society" and the housing bubble again by trying to help young people into houses they can't afford. It worked so well the last time. This proposal is brought to us by the National Association of Realtors ($225K speech) and the major banks ($3 million in speeches) that originate the majority of mortgages in this country. Will they originate a mortgage in the Bronx, or is that a redlined area?
We can't afford universal health care even though 1.7 million Americans a year are driven into bankruptcy by medical bills. We can't afford free college tuition at state colleges and universities even though student debt has tripled in the last 10 years. We can't afford a cost of living increase for people living on $13,000 a year in Social Security payments.
But we can afford to hand $10,000 to families making $50,000 in the Bronx to help them make a 20% down payment on a $360,000 median home in the Bronx that they probably can't afford to maintain and will likely lose if they are ever out of work for 3 or 4 months.
What idiocy.
WhaTHellsgoingonhere
(5,252 posts)CentralCoaster
(1,163 posts)I thought we already did this.
Look, just like her college debt plan she plans to keep people in debt.
Banks win. We lose.
BernieforPres2016
(3,017 posts)We've been down this debt path to try to make up for no income growth for the middle class over the last 35 years. We've had near zero interest rates for 7 years now trying to get the debt train rolling again, to get the banks lending and the people borrowing and it isn't taking, with the exception of student debt.
CentralCoaster
(1,163 posts)And no savings.
And tons of monthly recurring bills.
TV used to be free, cellphone
BernieforPres2016
(3,017 posts)Bill didn't leave many stones unturned.
CentralCoaster
(1,163 posts)I'm going to adopt that phrase and use it where appropriate.
We used to receive our TV material for free by broadcast and debates and like material were required content as part of the pact between broadcasters and the people, managed by the FCC.
Our Internet should be the same, provided free with some commercial content, that's the tradeoff and fair.
Instead, we now have to pay for both, it keeps us poor.
BernieforPres2016
(3,017 posts)They give me a "discounted" rate for a 1-2 year contract, then the "discounts" roll off and the monthly bill jumps from around $60 to over $100 one month. I look for it on the credit card bill where I have it auto billed. Then I call DIRECTV and tell them that either they are going to put the bill back near where it was, to pretend I'm a new customer and give me the deal they give them, or I am going to expend the energy to figure out how to go with an antenna and Netflix and Hulu and all that stuff, and pull the plug on them and never come back. I just did it again a couple of weeks ago and had to go to the 3rd level of their "customer service" before getting someone who only had to listen to about 30 seconds of my speech before they quickly cut my bill to a couple of dollars below what it was and gave me 4 months of free Showtime. I asked her if there wasn't any way they could just treat long time customers fairly instead of putting us through this crap every year or two, and she said she would relay my comments on to her superiors.
CentralCoaster
(1,163 posts)I have a condo that I rent out as a vacation rental, so need to provide internet and cable.
I told Comcast no plans, no packages, month to month and it has to be under $100 or I walk.
They meet my terms but the price seems to creep up every so often and I have to call them and smack em back to under $100/mo.
Not signing a contract is my ace in the hole.
In my regular home where I live most of the year, I have Internet only that I need for work and for TV I use a digital antenna for free broadcast.
What's cool is that because I'm an Xfinity cable customer in another city, I can use that account here for online content, if you know what I mean.
ViseGrip
(3,133 posts)Viva_La_Revolution
(28,791 posts)How outta touch can you be? Those people were more concerned about how to pay for food and rent this month, and she's talking about buying houses.
BernieforPres2016
(3,017 posts)much more than it did in the white community, because AA's tend to put more of their wealth in their homes than in 401Ks and other investment vehicles. Van Jones and Donna Brazile talked about that at one of the earlier debates as one of the "secrets" of their community, even though I've seen numerous mentions of it in articles since the housing collapse. Is Hillary the only one who doesn't know that, or is she just incapable of coming with up any new ideas?
jmg257
(11,996 posts)Banks can make more money, and Hillary can point to rising homeownership as a sign of how good things are getting.
Sounds disturbingly familiar.
Carni
(7,280 posts)I agree with the OP we have money for this, but not college funding? How's that?