Friday, November 11, 2011
Government Pays For Restoration Procts
This article talks about the Administration Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which provides federal money to state and local governments to buy, renovate and resell vacant and foreclosed houses. The program has a $7 billion budget, $26 million of which is going to Baltimore alone. The program is relatively young, only 11,545 houses have been sold using the program, however the ANSP seems like a waste of federal money. In Baltimore, a group of non profit organizations called Healthy Neighborhoods, has been doing the same exact thing and has been reselling houses at a loss. I can't imagine that state and local governments are fairing any better than Healthy Neighborhoods, which means that federal dollars are being wasted on the effort. The money might be better served for another purpose.
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This article really highlighted the initiative that some groups are taking to try and bring us out of the recession. Some people may forget that residential fixed assets area apart of investment and that we cannot always look to build business investment. It will be interesting to see how much an impact this program will have and far it will reach across the nation. It seems as if it at least doing good to the neighborhoods it is in by attempting to increase the property values and showing that construction is going on.
ReplyDeleteI never really thought about the fact that the longer a house stays vacant, the more expensive it will be to renovate. The program is currently selling most properties at a loss, but maybe in the future they will fix somewhat recent vacant homes to try and sell them for a profit. I guess only time will tell.
I agree that it's probably too early to tell if the program will be effective or not, but that's why the government is using Baltimore as a test case. For now it's probably just good that the program is putting some people to work and putting more money into the economy, something which the US economy really needs right now.
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