The special inspector general for the ""Troubled Asset Relief Program"":http://www.sigtarp.gov/ (TARP) released a damning report Thursday that said only 3 percent of the funds designated to the hardest-hit homeowners have reached their goals.
[IMAGE]The report found that only $217.4 million will have helped 30,640 homeowners by 2017, when the Hardest-Hit Fund (HHF) expires.
Special Inspector General ""Christy Romero"":http://www.sigtarp.gov/about_ig.shtml wrote that ""[u]nless there is a drastic change in the assistance the GSEs and their conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, will support, the [HHF] may be much narrower
[COLUMN_BREAK]in scope and scale than what was originally expected due to the lack of servicer and GSE support for certain programs.""
Seventy-eight percent of HHF funds went to unemployment assistance for homeowners, and nearly 98 percent went to the same or helped reinstate past due amounts, according to the report.
""Without significant change, while the [HHF] may be able to reach unemployed homeowners as was originally intended, it is likely to be limited in addressing negative equity for homeowners who are underwater,"" Romero added.
The report outlined extensive reforms for TARP and the HHF, saying that ""Treasury should set measurable goals, measure progress against those goals, and develop an action plan to ensure that the next five years result in the Hardest Hit fund fulfilling TARP's goal to preserve homeownership.""
It said that the HHF grew from a five-state program with $1.5 billion to one that covered 18 states and Washington, D.C., with $7.6 billion in taxpayer funds.
The funds were intended to assist with principal reductions, second-lien payoffs, unemployment, and relocation assistance, among other areas.