Sticking it to jobless homeowners?
OK, maybe a bit pungent, but there is no sense in sugar coating this one.
As I blogged earlier this week, there is a catch to the Obama Administration's supposed $1 billion lifeline for jobless homeowners.
If you and your spouse pulled down than $110,150 before a layoff or a big hit in income, you won't get a dime from the newly launched Emergency Homeowner Loan Program.
That excludes a lot of people - from a school teacher married to a cop who pulled in a little overtime to a sales guy who made $120,000 a year before he lost half his commissions.
Hardly extravagant incomes in Greater Boston, where the middle of the housing market ranges from $267,184 to $404,029, according to Case Shiller.
That's bound to leave a lot of solidly middle class homeowners in need of a break on the outside looking in.
Just take isitfriday, who was the first to weigh in when I first blogged on this a couple days ago.
"Our family is one of those families who is headed by a sales position. My husband's business is down 30% due to the economy but we would not qualify for this program b/c we made approx $110k one year. For 4 people. Oh, and we scrape and scrimp every month to make our mortgage payment- it is priority #1. But working with 30% less than you did last year is hard-very hard. We both still have jobs but 30% off $110k is A LOT."
The Obama folks should take some heat for this.
After all, they got a huge round of free publicity when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs announced plans last week to throw a lifeline to jobless homeowners.
While some of the coverage, including the Globe's, mentioned the income requirements, it's typically treated as just another extraneous detail.
Yet it was nothing short of a gift going into the tightly contested mid-term elections.
Sorry, but I am having a hard time of understanding the government's rationale that families who pulled in more than $110,150 before getting hit with a layoff or two are somehow less deserving of help.
I rang up a HUD spokesman down in Washington, who repeated the party line - the program is "targeted" at helping low and moderate income homeowners.
OK, fine.
But why wouldn't that cover the engineer who made $115,000 before he got a pink slip but now earns nothing and is about to see his unemployment benefits expire?
How much more "low-income" can you get than that?
