No Hope for Homeowners?

Congress passed the Hope for Homeowners Act last summer, setting aside $300 billion to help people refinance into more affordable mortgages. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the program could help 400,000 people keep their homes when it was first introduced. But the program has failed.

More than six months after the program was launched, the Federal Housing Administration says only one homeowner has made it all the way through the government program and received the FHA guarantee. The FHA says it has only received 868 applications. Fifty-one of those have been finalized to some degree by lenders. And the FHA has only guaranteed one loan.