A program aimed at helping hurting homeowners stay in their residences is gathering more criticism. The incoming head of the a House of Representatives panel overseeing the Obama administration is calling for the program to be stopped. It’s called HAMP- Home Affordable Modification Program. “This program seems to have outlived its usefulness,” Representative Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said at a House Judiciary Committee meeting according to Reuters.

The HAMP program was designed to help reduce mortgage payments for homeowners facing foreclosure. Records show the program has helped about half a million homeowners finalize loan modifications. They are people who would have had their loans modified by the bank anyway, says Issa. Plenty of leaders believe the program is tangled in too much red tape and not helping those who really need it– homeowners who have had their incomes cut or lost jobs. The program was supposed to lower monthly payments so they could stay in their homes.

Issa wasn’t the only one upset about HAMP’s progress. Panel members also expressed their anger towards documentation problems that created controversy earlier this year. Banks were reported to have signed hundreds of foreclosure documents without really reviewing them properly. “Can you explain how the OCC which regulates the large banks that are at the center of this controversy failed to detect that there were foreclosure documentation issues well before this turned into a crisis that we find has gummed up the entire works here and caused problems for families, problems for people who want to buy homes, has really altered the entire real estate market in the country,” Representative Robert Goodlatte asked a top lawyer at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which supervises the largest U.S. banks, according to Reuters.

Julie Williams, chief counsel at the OCC, defended her agency saying they were more focused on overseeing the loan modification process. “There were no warning signs from internal audit, quality control, or even complaints relating to the foreclosure documentation aspect of mortgage servicing that were triggering red lights for us,” Williams said according to Reuters. “In hindsight, if we think about the volume of transactions that were going through the process, we could have been more suspicious.” Right now Bank of America, JPMorgan and other major lenders are being investigated by the 50 state attorneys general and federal agents.

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