Virginia getting $3.5 million more for housing settlement
08 Feb 2013
Posted by Andrew Kantor, Editor & Blogmaster []
Back in 2012, Virginia received about $66 million from the National Mortgage Settlement — the money paid by mortgage lenders for falsifying records, forging signatures, and otherwise ignoring the law so they could foreclose more quickly.
Now Lender Processing Services, which worked with lenders, was also caught breaking the law. As Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan told the Chicago Sun-Times:
LPS and its subsidiaries became a sort of document factory, literally rubber stamping thousands of foreclosures with no regard for fairness and accuracy in the process.
Luckily, it too was caught and agreed to pay 46 states — including Virginia — $120 million.
Our share is supposed to go to housing, but it’s up to the General Assembly to decide whether to actually do that. Last time, most of the money (about 90 percent) went into the general fund.


2 Responses
Carmen M. Martin
08|Feb|2013 1Funds received as a result of housing issue settlements should be allocated to housing issues only…not general fund allocations. I believe settlements resulted from a housing issue deficiency and need to be used to improve similar or other housing issues in the Commonwealth.
Jim Duncan
10|Feb|2013 2I agree with Carmen – It’s a shame that the housing settlement funds go into the general fund.
From ProPublica late last year –
“The AG turned over the entirety of the funds to the state legislature without stipulations on how it could be spent. House Democrats originally proposed a budget amendment that would funnel the money to housing programs, but it was voted down. Ultimately, $7 million from the settlement was directed to a state housing fund, according to state lawmakers.”
http://www.propublica.org/special/where-are-the-foreclosure-deal-millions-going
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