Dory Rand

Imagine Gail, a 30-year-old mother of two school-age children. Gail is on ChexSystems and has a low credit score as the result of actions taken by an abusive former husband who controlled the household budget and joint accounts. (About 80 percent of banks use ChexSystems to screen applicants...

Policymakers, nonprofits, planners, researchers, and financial institutions are putting their heads together to try and diminish the negative impacts that vacant properties have on their surrounding neighborhoods. The ordinances passed by the Chicago City Council and the Board of Commissioners of Cook County are two examples...

Eliminating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been a top priority for some lawmakers looking to reform the housing finance system. Congressman Scott Garrett (R-NJ) recently filed a draft bill that proposes a private alternative to the government-sponsored entities (GSEs). Congressman Garrett's plan, The Private Mortgage Market Investment...

With home values continuing a steep decline, little change in the unemployment rate, and 26 percent of Illinoisans owing more than their home is worth, little has been done to buoy confidence that an economic recovery is at hand. A settlement of the investigations surrounding last year's robo-signing scandal that,...

I am taking my first child to college this week. He is excited about being a freshman and taking interesting classes in history and other subjects. I realize how very fortunate he is to have this opportunity and how many other students lack the financial resources to go to college....

I tend to be a "glass half full" optimist, so I'm pretty happy about the launch of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on July 21. Having a regulator that looks out for the interests of consumers is definitely something to celebrate.

When talking about "risk" with the old school...

When it takes a long time to create a problem, it often takes even longer to fix it. In Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality, Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro illustrated how various American tax, property and financial policies and practices precluded generations...

It's hard to feel lonely in Roxie King's house. The walls are packed with row upon row of pictures of Roxie's parents, two children, twenty grandchildren, and other loved ones celebrating various stages in life. On a recent visit, Roxie proudly showed two visitors around her clean and cozy ranch-style...

We at Woodstock Institute have long argued that, in order for loan modifications programs to effectively prevent foreclosures on a broad scale, they need to include a component of reducing the principal owed on underwater homes. In fact, we bring it up pretty much every time we talk to policymakers,...

It's no secret that the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) isn't doing enough to put a substantial dent in the wave of foreclosures hitting the Chicago area and the country. The greater Chicago region has still seen 132,289 new foreclosures since HAMP was introduced--clearly, the need for substantial...

Debate is brewing across the country about what shape our housing finance system should take in the years to come. Consumer advocates need to ensure that the system that emerges from these discussions meets the needs of low-wealth people seeking affordable and sustainable housing.

The new housing finance system must...

The stretch of Honore between Marquette Road and 68th Street in West Englewood has all the markings of a disinvested neighborhood: it's dotted with vacant, weedy lots and boarded-up homes with overgrown lawns strewn with garbage. On a recent trip to this block, Woodstock Institute's Senior Vice President,...

2010 was a heartening year for consumer advocates working to eliminate income tax refund anticipation loans (RALs), the high-cost loans that strip assets from low-wealth tax filers. First, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the federal regulator of national banks, issued a policy...

A couple weeks ago, we wrote about some new Treasury data that found that most borrowers whose HAMP modifications were canceled have not yet lost their homes. We decided to dig a little deeper into the data and look at what individual servicers are doing with borrowers they...

The longer this foreclosure crisis drags on, the clearer it is that voluntary loan modification programs are inadequate to meet the needs of millions of borrowers with homes worth less than the mortgages. A recent commentary published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland shows how an old...

Richard Otero-Cintrón is the kind of person who knows how to seize an opportunity when he sees one. It's how he became the owner of North Chicago Auto Service after starting out in 1990 as the maintenance man who swept the floors and made sure the windows were clean. Over...

The number of active trial and permanent Home Affordable Modification Program modifications continues to drop in the Chicago region, according to new data released by Treasury. The past three months have seen active modifications drop to record lows (see our previous analyses). There were 32,880 active...

Froylan and Amparo Nuñez remember what their block in South Chicago was like back in the day. Good jobs were still available at the steel mills nearby and their son, Froilan Jr., played next door with his friend Hector.

Times have changed. The Nuñezes now have little granddaughters. The steel...

Congress has an opportunity to spur job creation and recovery from the foreclosure crisis -- and at little cost to the taxpayer.

How is this possible? The American Community Investment Reform Act of 2010 (H.R. 6334), introduced last week by Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), would promote safe, sound, and...

As the recession drags on, policymakers and community leaders are searching for strategies to encourage job creation, investment in neighborhoods, and a return to economic stability. The findings from Woodstock Institute's latest report, however, depict troubling barriers to recovery -- particularly in communities hit hardest by the financial crisis.

In...