Mayors Meet to Discuss Foreclosure Woes
An article published by CNN gives details of the latest meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors. According to the article:
- The mortgage meltdown will take a heavy toll on home prices in 2008 with declines expected to average 7 percent across the nation and lost property value of $1.2 trillion, according to the United States Conference of Mayors.
- The organization has representatives from more than 1,100 cities and were meeting to address problems brought on by spikes in foreclosure rates.
- “Today the foreclosure crisis has the potential to break the back of our economy, as well as the backs of millions of American families, if we don’t do something soon,” said USCM President Douglas Palmer, Mayor of Trenton, N.J., in a written statement.
- Municipalities will start to feel the pinch with a decline in the property tax growth rate. Some places could even experience an outright decline in collections. The housing decline will also affect state coffers, as transfer taxes plummet along with home sales volumes.
I’m not sure how productive this meeting was. Sure it’s a good thing to discuss concerns about current issues, but it should lead to ideas for solutions. We don’t need our elected officials to sit around and share their complaints and woes. What they, and everybody else should be doing is working to find solutions. We may not be able to stop the credit crisis dead in its tracks, but we can try to curb its effects. We should be spending our time and energy figuring out how to do that, not just vocalizing our fears. One creative idea for solving a debt problem is to take out a 2nd mortgage.
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