Murray hears housing woes
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Steven Lane/The Columbian
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray attended a meeting at the Vancouver Housing Authority on Monday to hear how the mortgage crisis has affected people locally. |
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Tuesday, March 18, 2008
By CAMI JONER, Columbian staff writerU.S. Senator Patty Murray got an earful Monday about Southwest Washington’s housing woes, amid the national mortgage crisis and rising foreclosures.
“I think it’s one of the most pressing challenges facing our nation,” said the Washington Democrat, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development.
Her visit was to learn how the problem is affecting local homeowners, she said. “I want to find out as much as I can.”
During the first two months of 2008, the region’s housing industry dramatically cooled. Home sales in Clark County have hit 20-year lows, down 36.4 percent from 2007. Construction activity has slowed to a trickle, and homes in some stage of foreclosure have climbed 251.7 percent when compared with a year ago.
A panel of local experts that included housing advocates, Realtors, home builders, bankers and mortgage lenders outlined problems with the housing industry, which employs thousands in Clark County. Most called for more federal assistance to help pay for foreclosure counseling and outreach programs for homeowners in trouble.
Increasing need
“We’ve started seeing an increase in the need,” said Teri Duffy, executive director of the Community Housing Resource Center in Vancouver. Her agency is receiving four or five requests a day for help with foreclosure. Here’s what others told Murray:
- Jeff Smith, vice president of Accel Mortgage Corp. in Vancouver, called for educating mortgage brokers as well as consumers. “People at both ends have to know what they’re doing.”
- Marcel Goulet, mortgage loan officer with U.S. Bank Home Mortgage in Longview, said he sees a regional need for emergency foreclosure counseling, along with education for future buyers. “A lot of people go into foreclosure simply because they don’t know where to turn.”
- Matt Clarkson, custom home builder and owner of Soaring Eagle Homes in Vancouver, pointed out that foreclosures at the lower end of the market eventually affect sales of his higher-end custom-built homes. “If that person can’t sell their home and move up, the whole thing falls apart.”
Lack of HUD funding
Duffy explained that her Vancouver-based nonprofit agency did not receive funding this year from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and has not been able to offer foreclosure counseling. The center has since scraped together enough money to add a full-time foreclosure counselor to its four-person staff next month.
Meanwhile, rip-off artists who call themselves foreclosure counselors have been zeroing in on Clark County, Duffy said, as she held up signs plucked from random Vancouver street corners.
The signs, one of which said “Stop foreclosure, any price, any condition,” promote questionable services, and the services often charge more than $1,000 to desperate homeowners, Duffy said.
“You can see these signs everywhere,” she said, pointing out that her agency has no budget to advertise its services.
“We have no dollars, Senator, to do outreach, let alone counseling,” Duffy said.
Cami Joner covers real estate. She can be reached at 360-735-4532 or cami.joner@columbian.com. | 
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