PHILADELPHIA -- Barack Obama placards are planted just a few feet from “For Sale” signs on lawns in the decidedly middle class community of Mt. Airy.
For at least four decades, this suburban-style tree-lined enclave in the northwest part of the city has been heralded as a model of harmonious racial diversity and economic stability. The wealthier corners of the community, with median household incomes ranging well into six figures, and the poorer sections, where $40,000 per year is common, are heavily Democratic and very liberal.
As the political and real-estate signs dotting the neighborhood seem to symbolize, middle-class communities are the places where the hardships brought on by the subprime mortgage crisis will be seized upon by Democrats during their campaign in their attacks on Republican economic policies. Democrats see a powerful tie between the Bush administration’s distaste for industry regulation and the deepening mortgage crisis, a connection they hope to drive home to voters as they craft their economic platform.
“Under Bush’s America, when he leaves office gas is going to cost you know $4-plus at the pump, the dollar is at its weakest, millions of people have lost their homes in foreclosures, students it will be made more difficult for them to go to college in terms of student loans,” said Rep. Chaka Fattah , whose 2nd District contains Mt. Airy. “Elections have consequences, and that’s why we hope people come out and vote, because the country’s a lot worse off than it was seven years ago.”
Obama and his rival for the Democratic nomination, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton , have proposed housing plans that would pour $30 billion of federal money into efforts to ameliorate the housing crisis, including assistance to state and local governments. They both have expressed support for congressional efforts to expand the Federal Housing Administration’s ability to insure home loans and repeal prohibitions on bankruptcy judges modifying the terms of home loans.
Obama wants to up mortgage revenue bond authority by $10 billion, which would facilitate the refinancing of home loans and the extension of credit for homebuyers who are new to the market. Clinton’s plan, which more heavily favors government intervention, would implement a 90-day national moratorium on foreclosures and freeze adjustable rate mortgages, or ARMs, for five years.
Their approaches vary markedly from that of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain , who is the senior senator from Arizona. McCain has been critical of those who want the government to subsidize big-time lenders and also those who want to provide money for consumers. He has been supportive of the Senate’s bipartisan relief package but offered little in the way of his own proposals for government action.
“All we want to do is have it hit bottom now so it can start going up,” McCain told Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren last week.
“I’ve always been committed to the principle that it’s not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they’re big banks or small borrowers,” he said in March.
Doug Holtz-Eakin, a senior McCain adviser and the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said McCain wants to see if the Senate’s plan is capable of adjusting to the crisis.
“If he decides ‘no,’ then he would move to make more proposals,” Holtz-Eakin said.
McCain’s stance is being received well by fiscal conservatives, a set that has misgivings about his past wavering on President Bush’s tax cuts.
“It is John McCain ’s policy minimalism — these things are relative — that merits compliments,” conservative columnist George Will wrote April 6.
But the speed with which housing legislation is making its way through Congress right now suggests that lawmakers of both parties are wary of appearing to do nothing to quell the housing crisis. Because Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail have called for more aggressive intervention on behalf of homeowners, McCain runs a risk by advocating for a less visible government hand in the solution, according to some experts.
Recognizing that political threat, the Bush administration proposed new steps Wednesday to help struggling homeowners in an effort to respond to the crisis but also to head off more ambitious Democratic plans.
“I think he (McCain) risks getting pinned into insensitivity,” said Kevin T. Leicht, director of the University of Iowa’s Institute for Inequality Studies and its Social Science Research Center. “It almost doesn’t matter if the Democrats’ proposals are any good or not.”
Republicans have little to lose in Mt. Airy, where the Democratic nominee is likely to get 90 percent or more of the vote in November.
But Leicht says the national foreclosure crisis could help position Democrats to make gains in “swing” suburbs with more mixed politics than Mt. Airy but similar economic profiles because the issue extends from the pocketbook to the heartstrings.
“People buy houses as a financial investment. You’re in this house. You’re in this neighborhood. It’s a sign that you’ve made it to the middle class,” he said. “For the middle class a home is such a central piece of the American dream, when you mess with that its like messing with the American flag.”
McCain adviser Holtz-Eakin said Obama and Clinton will pay a price for exploiting homeowners’ woes on the political battlefield.
“I think the Democratic presidential contenders have clearly crossed a line he didn’t want to cross and turned this into a political issue,” he said.
Philadelphia and Pennsylvania have not been as hard hit by the mortgage crisis as some places, but the signs in Mt. Airy — the ones that say “For Sale” — look like harbingers of more hemorrhaging in the housing market if a tourniquet is not applied soon.
And Congressman Fattah emphasizes the effects of foreclosures even on homeowners who are able to make payments on their mortgages.
“The real problem right now is that the property values are going down so you could literally be sitting in your home not facing foreclosure, not having a problem paying your mortgage, except that the house you’re paying the mortgage on is now worth less than what you owe,” Fattah said. “So you’re paying your mortgage but you actually have lost money even though you have not been faced with foreclosure because neighbors of yours have been put into a tough situation.”
The crisis has local officials, even former rivals, pulling together. Fattah was one of several candidates who lost to new Mayor Michael Nutter in a Democratic primary last year.
Nutter told a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee that Philadelphia officials are doing everything they can at the local level to staunch the flow of foreclosures, including instituting a moratorium on sales of foreclosed homes. But there is only so much that can be done at the local level, he said.
“We need the federal government to do its part,” Nutter said at a Philadelphia field hearing of the Committee on Monday. “Additional funding is needed to enable cities to maintain and purchase abandoned properties, to support housing counseling and legal assistance, and to provide bankruptcy relief to our citizens by allowing judges to modify mortgages.”
Nutter was speaking to a receptive audience: Chairman Christopher J. Dodd , D-Conn., helped write the Senate housing bill with $4 billion for Community Development Block Grants and $100 million for counseling services. He has vowed to do more, and House Democrats are drafting legislation that would allow the Federal Housing Administration to back more loans. But Democrats appear likely to abandon plans to let bankruptcy judges adjust mortgage agreements.
Senate Democrats have been criticized by advocacy groups for doing too little to help homeowners, and Dodd’s field hearing suggests sensitivity to the political risks for Democrats if Congress fails to take enough or proper action.
Unlike the hardships that are felt most acutely at the bottom of the economic scale, mortgage woes uniquely affect a demographic group that can be counted upon to show up to the polls: homeowners.
“Part of the reason why it’s getting some attention is that the people who are being affected are people who vote,” Fattah said.