UN Launches Probe into US Housing Crisis

UN Launches Probe into US Housing Crisis

www.breitbart.tv

The New York Times: The United Nations has assigned an official, “a special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing,” to check the city’s affordable housing. The rapporteur, Raquel Rolnik, is to tour the city for the next three days with housing advocates and city officials to “hear the voices of those who are suffering on the ground,” she said.

(visit the link for the full news article)

She's supposed to visit 6 other cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles and New Orleans. She'll be looking at public housing, homelessness and foreclosures.

Wonder what prompted this? I wonder what is going to come of this? What are your ideas?

Okay, it keeps telling me I don't have enough in comments here. So, I'll rattle for a little bit. Shouldn't someone in the US be able to okay this or not? Or has that already been done? I hadn't heard of this before today.

www.breitbart.tv
(visit the link for the full news article)

I would say another major crash in the housing market. Even though we are still in a hole, but there will be more and more forclosures as the money keeps vanishing with job cuts and increased taxes. IMO.

I hope she gets mugged in New Orleans!!

What a crock! What gives them the right? What do they think they can do about it? Who cares? and Pffffflllllllttt!!!

Seriously, just say they find living conditions abismal and similar to Somalia.......the UN can't seem to do anything about it in Somalia with no government and sparsely armed gangs, so what the h*ll are they going to do inside the U.S.?

This is a recipe for political disaster. Either they go back and say things are fine, keep spending money, the world economy is fine, and they show their ineptitude........or.........they go back and say, the US is in a dire situation, housing is abismal, the economy is in freefall, and the whole world dumps the dollar and crashes the world economy!

So, what is the purpose of this visit?

Originally posted by raz24400
I would say another major crash in the housing market.

really? why?

THe UN?

*&&^^&^*&%$$# &^% **&*^

“The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.” Democrats pushed back. “Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing”.

“These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis”, said Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed. “I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

Well the international community has a substantial amount of investment in U.S. Real Estate. It’s fairly certain that the people in China, South America, Europe and the Middle East that have invested heavily in the U.S. Housing market aren’t to thrilled about the steep decline in value on their investments.

While this is being vaguely done in the guise that people everywhere deserve affordable housing they sure don’t seem concerned about the housing situation in places like Darfur!

This appears to me to be a thinly veiled notice to the U.S. Government and the Banks regarding the unease over declining home values in America and the mounting costs to people all over the world who have invested in it.

It is estimated that here in Miami where I live that home values will decline another 20% in price over the next year or so further down from the 28% they have already declined off of their all time highs less than 2 years ago.

The median home price is estimated to bottom out at 150,000 down from 325,000 in less than a three year period.

That is a staggering loss of value and equity and wealth. While the market actually needs the correction and the prices had become grossly inflated due to over speculation by investors, investors and banks are all going to take a significant hit to the value of their portfolios as a result.

It would seem to be not is there growing discontent and concern here in America regarding our domestic economic situation but there is growing discontent and concern abroad in the international community regarding our domestic economic situation and this appears to be a sign of that to me.

The great thing about messages is that sometimes the lights are on but nobody is home. Return to sender address unknown.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


When you "invest" in something, it's always a dice roll. The housing market went higher than ever before. We've all heard the saying, "What goes up, must come done." That applies to just about everything.

The housing prices were destined to come back down. They had to. Our economy wasn't growing anywhere near what the housing prices were. It was just a matter of time before the bottom fell out.

At the beginning of 2000, the average house price was $100,000. In about 5 yrs that doubled. We're back to where we were abt 2003. Again, when an investor saw the rapidly rising prices, they should have known it could not be sustained.

Nobody's happy when they lose, but it's simply a fact of life. We still have one of the best housing available in the world. Just 'cause somebody is pouting over monetary loss shouldn't mean we allow the outside world come into our sovereign nation.

But I still say that someone here in the US, like the President, should have denied them this access.

Like you said, if the UN really cared about the world's housing situation, they need to spend the money on trips and tours elsewhere in more dire straits.

The UN can get lost. They are a useless organization without a backbone. They would be nothing without US military power.

This is just an attempt by the UN to write another one of their useless reports to make the USA look bad. If they were really concerned with housing then they should be focused on the 3rd world where people live in mud and straw huts. Stay out of America, we can take care of our own without help from the blue hats..