It's Your House; You Don't Have to Leave

Back in January, Ohio representatives Marcy Kaptur stood on the floor of the House and told people to fight foreclosure by squatting in their homes and refusing to leave.

We've since discovered that many of the criminal mortgage companies who jacked up interest rates to force people out of their homes could not even prove they held the mortgage in the first place.

Stay in your homes, advocates for working families advised. Force the fuckers to prove it in court.

At the same time, local officials started to realize that having a bunch of foreclosed homes blighting the city and becoming havens for criminals was just making things worse.

Now one of the biggest mortgage holders in the country has thrown in the towel and joined the stay-in-your-house crowd.

Digby explains:

Dean Baker has been recommending this since the beginning of the housing crisis. How do you deal with all these people who are losing their homes while at the same time dealing with the plummeting property values in places where there are many obvious foreclosures? And how do you deal with the moral hazard of major debt forgiveness? (That question should have been put to the banksters first and foremost, but well ... they are so talented and productive that moral hazards don't apply to such as them.)

Anyway, it looks like Fannie Mae is going to give a shot to letting people stay in their homes as renters rather than forcing eviction. People obviously lose their investment, but they don't lose the roof over their heads. And the banks have people living in their foreclosed homes.

The devil is in the details, of course, but if it works it's a much better outcome for everyone.