The Family Foreclosure Rescue Corporation (FFRC), modeled after Roosevelt’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the successful New Deal program that stabilized the financial system and protected homeowners from foreclosure, is one in a family of policies that can protect families facing delinquency, default, and foreclosure. The FFRC would offer new fixed-rate mortgages to borrowers who are effectively precluded from refinancing because of negative home equity caused by declining prices. Designed to operate at minimal cost and risk to taxpayers, the FFRC would buy up existing non-performing mortgages at a discount and offer mortgage holders corporate bonds in their stead. The FFRC is designed to directly help at-risk borrowers, stabilize neighborhoods by preventing widespread foreclosures, and potentially restore liquidity to the capital markets from the bottom up. This program is meant to complement other programs and efforts underway to refinance borrowers into safer mortgages or otherwise prevent foreclosures.
We invite you to a panel discussion that will highlight our new white paper, "Throwing Homeowners a Lifeline: A Proposal for Direct Lending to Qualified Troubled Borrowers." Representative Joe Baca (D – CA) will provide opening remarks and introduce new legislation to create the FFRC, followed by a presentation on FFRC by Andrew Jakabovics, the Associate Director for the Economic Mobility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Andrew will be joined in a panel discussion by Jef Kinney, Vice President for Innovation and Development at Fannie Mae, and Jeanne Fekade-Selassie, Homeownership Specialist at NeighborWorks America, moderated by Louis Soares, Director of the Economic Mobility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.