America's Housing Crisis

Floor Speech

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, in 2008, gas prices that rose above $4 a gallon triggered the Wall Street meltdown and housing crisis that continue to plague our country. We're in the same boat today again with gas prices going over $4 a gallon, so be prepared.

I rise today to talk about that housing crisis that is devaluing our housing stock across our country and destroying neighborhoods and communities across the Nation.

Last week, the New York Times ran a piece I wish to place in the Record highlighting one more twist in this crisis. According to their front page expose, the big banks and mortgage companies have profited even more from the foreclosure crisis by amassing giant ``real estate empires'' that span across our country. So not only do six banks now control two-thirds of the banking system of this country, they've also become real estate magnates, too. When is too much too much?

The impact on communities has been devastating. The numbers are simply shocking. In my community alone, over 6,700 more homes are in some type of foreclosure filings. While thousands of America's families are being thrown out on the street, the big Wall Street banks have nearly doubled the number of houses they've taken through foreclosure since the crisis began 5 years ago. That represents nearly 900,000 homes. That's 900,000 more families whose American Dream ended in foreclosure.

Sadly, this doesn't include those who are barely hanging on. Approximately one in four mortgaged homes are still underwater, where families owe more than the home is worth.

After taking billions of dollars from our taxpayers, we might expect that the Wall Street banks would want to help people stay in their homes and help more vacant properties be taken off the market. Well, that's not what I'm hearing from local realtors. I spoke with a group of them over a week ago. They keep running up against a brick wall any time they even try to do a workout with one of these banks. They continue to have difficulty accessing credit for qualified, willing buyers. More and more, I hear how it's only our local banks and our credit unions that are making any effort to make this troubled housing market function.

Wall Street walked away with billions in bailout money, and then walked away from the housing mess they created. But they want even more. All the while they are sitting on top of huge profits and taking enormous tax breaks. The six largest banks in the country, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, together paid an approximate tax rate of only 11 percent of their pretax U.S. earnings in 2009 and 2010, less than half of what other businesses pay. I wish someone in this place could explain why this is allowed to go on.

We need to understand that this foreclosure crisis is far from over. In the first quarter of this year alone, approximately 215,000 more properties were in foreclosure across our country, and another 700,000 properties were either in foreclosure filings, received default notice, bank repossession or scheduled auction. As these banks continue to agglomerate these properties that are becoming vacant, neighborhoods across our country are being devalued and continue to disintegrate. Every Member here knows what I'm talking about.

There are some signs that our economy is slowly improving. But, boy, we aren't out of the woods yet. Moody's is predicting that housing prices across our Nation will continue to fall by as much as 5 percent by this year's end--I should say 5 percent more. We cannot sit on our hands and hope the situation gets better. Revival of the housing sector and the jobs it creates has always played a crucial and leading role in any economic recovery. We need to work to help struggling families stay in their homes, protect neighborhoods from being riddled with vacant structures and get our economy moving again by arresting the continuing decline in our vital housing assets built up over decades coast to coast.

Importantly, revitalizing and reoccupying the troubled housing stock would put millions of Americans to work. And isn't it over time to do exactly that?

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