Looks like tax payers will be fitting the bill for communities that have foreclosed home to fix them up and sell them to new people.

Sorry if you lost your house in the first place... the gov't wasn't there then but they are willing to buy your old house now, fix it up and then resell it

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/ny...17homesli.html

JUST as foreclosure has shut the door to homeownership for some families, it is opening the door to a small number of others for whom homeownership used to be out of reach.

When Evelyn O’Hara signed a contract last month to buy her first house, in Valley Stream, she became the first owner in Nassau County to benefit from a federal program that rehabilitates foreclosed homes, or homes that have been abandoned or left vacant.

The program is meant to bring back higher home values in neighborhoods hard hit by foreclosures.

“Most minority communities have been hit heavily with foreclosures,” said Wayne J. Hall Sr., the mayor of the Village of Hempstead. “We have about 400 houses in foreclosure, maybe more. Some are in pretty good shape, but when they’re boarded up, squatters come in and that brings down the value of the neighborhood. This program will help bring our village back.”

Ms. O’Hara’s new three-bedroom Cape, with hardwood floors, new appliances and a private backyard, is one of six houses in Nassau that were bought from Fannie Mae through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which awards grants to municipalities for the rehabilitation.

Nassau County, which received $3.1 million in grant money, partnered with the Long Island Housing Partnership and Bedford Construction, a private developer in Valley Stream, to buy the homes.

The six homes in Nassau — one each in Valley Stream, Hempstead, Massapequa, Elmont, Glen Cove and Westbury — were bought for a total of $1.3 million. The Long Island Housing Partnership is in charge of buying the houses, rehabilitating them and selling them to eligible buyers at reduced prices, from $170,000 to $275,000, said Peter Elkowitz, the group’s president. The plan is to reinvest the money from the sale of each house to buy and renovate others, he said.

The number of foreclosed homes in Nassau County jumped to 1,337 from 767 from the last quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009, according to the Nassau County Office of Housing and Homeless Services. In Suffolk, the number of foreclosures rose to 769 from 442 during the same period.

Now that the nation’s largest banks have lifted the moratorium on foreclosures, the numbers are expected to keep rising, Mr. Elkowitz said.

“Every foreclosure brings the property value down by 6 percent,” he said. “Our first goal is to stabilize the communities and to bring back the property value.”

Ms. O’Hara, 29, an English teacher at Oceanside Middle School, has been living with her parents in Valley Stream and is getting married in July.

“We had been looking for a house and hadn’t had much luck,” she said.

She qualified for the stabilization program because she was a first-time home buyer, her credit was approved and her income was low enough. The guidelines set the limit at 120 percent of the national median income: $85,600 for a single individual, $122,200 for a family of four. She also had to complete a course on the finances of homeownership.

The county’s goal, said Connie Lassandro, director of the Nassau County Office of Housing and Homeless Services, is to turn over at least 100 houses over the next few years, concentrating on the Hempstead-Roosevelt-Freeport region, which has been hit hard with foreclosures.

“The problem started after many people obtained mortgages who shouldn’t have,” she said. “But it has been further exacerbated by so many people losing their jobs.”

Suffolk County and the Towns of Islip and Babylon are also taking part in the program.

Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, said the county and the two towns had $11 million to spend, and were reviewing the foreclosures to select which ones to buy. “Some of the specific pockets first being considered are Huntington Station, Mastic-Shirley and North Bellport,” he said. “We plan to buy the houses at 75 percent of their value and then flip them to first-time buyers.”
Thank you gov't! Without you, somehow, these people would have had to earn their own way and buy houses like everyone else did.

I think what pisses me off the most is that if these people that are buying the homes had gone to the bank they could have bought the home on their own, instead they wait for the gov't to fix it up and foot the bill, then they buy it at a discount.

bullshit