Arizona Allots Funds To Contain Foreclosures And Help Victims

September 15th, 2008 | Tags: Real Estate

Arizona has reason to cheer for it has allotted funds to contain foreclosures and help the victims. It has in its kitty $13.6 million for this purpose. The increasing number of homeless families is causing grave concern together with the rise in foreclosures. People are failing to find rental accommodation.

This is the largest amount of money the state has set aside for foreclosure measures. The announcement was recently made at Flagstaff. Arizona Housing Trust is providing the funds that have been generated from deduction of a certain percentage from the sale of unclaimed properties in Arizona including bank deposits and the like. No taxpayer has had to contribute to this trust. Its volume varies from year to year. In the current year the target is to expend $6million on foreclosure related housing programmes. The balance will be spent on new ventures.

The help could not have been more timely. In Phoenix pre-foreclosure or trustee sales have touched 7,271 in August. In the valley foreclosures have been moving around 4,000 in each of the past few months. If the besieged house owners do not get help the number will invariably increase.

Fred Karnas of the Housing Department said, “Everyone deserves a safe, decent and affordable place to live.” He was heartened to see that one Saturday morning at Phoenix City Hall there were about 100 foreclosure victims queuing up just to get a chance to talk to a housing counselor at a foreclosure conference.

Arizona ranks high in the national foreclosure race. It was granted $1.3 million from the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling Program this year. The fund was to be exclusively used for foreclosure prevention – being the first of its kind. But the amount was far below the amount that other states with less number of foreclosures got. There is no doubt that Arizona needs more help to contain the menace of foreclosures. Housing counselors are overwhelmed with calls for help and the lenders faced with increasing losses do not have the resources to help the foreclosure victims. The net result is that the residents of Arizona are hurt from many directions – increasing fuel and food prices and falling value of property leading to loss of the houses, opines the Governor, Janet Napolitano.

This year till now about 25,000 families in metro Phoenix region have surrendered their houses to foreclosure. In contrast during 2005 there were less than 1,500 foreclosures across the region in the entire year.