Celebrities Who Were Once Homeless

Here's the link to a site about celebrities that were once homeless: 

http://homelesstales.com/2008/07/famous-people-who-have-been-homeless/

There's a new HUD head...so whats the plan?

This past Saturday President-Elect Obama named his Secretary of Housing, and given that about 1.4 million Americans wound up in foreclosure in 2008, it's a pretty important post.

Shaun Donavon, former housing commissioner in New York, graduated from Harvard with graduate degrees in Public Policy and Architecture, and has served in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the past.

Mr. Donovan has experience in all facets of the affordable housing market, having worked in both the nonprofit and private sectors and in academia as a scholar of housing policy. He has even worked as an architect in New York and Italy.

People have, understandably, been asking him how he plans to tackle the housing crisis. Apart from those who already lost their homes in 2008, hundreds of thousands more are on the brink of foreclosure. A successful plan to combat these foreclosures has not yet been implemented.

Back in July a plan called Hope for Homeowners was created to insure up to 300 billion dollars of 400,000 troubled homeowners risky loans by swapping for "conventional 30-year fixed-rate loans with lower rates". The problem, though, is that the program is voluntary for lenders, who probably have felt they could get more money by abstaining. Only 100 applied in the first month of the program, and participation hasn't been much better since, largely because in the current plan,

lenders have to take a big loss. They must absorb the difference between the current mortgage’s value and a new loan for 90 percent of the house’s current appraised value.

That doesn't sound like very a hopeful scenario. An alternate way to help homeowners that Secretary-appointed Donovan says he is "looking very closely at" is having the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) injecting money directly into the troubled mortgages.

Currently, since the proposal of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was proposed, $350 billion have been in the works, with "$189 billion having been [spent] in 257 banks in 42 states and Puerto Rico". This past Monday, the Senate approved of the second $350 billion, with one plan drafted by Barney Frank appropriating at least 40 billion of that amount to home foreclosure prevention.

Anyway, all in all, the new Secretary of Housing has a lot on his plate, and a whole bunch of peoples' home security in his hands.

Mr. Donovan, 42, would have an automatic place on the boards that oversee the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, an economic recovery fund, and the agency restructuring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the home loan repurchase giants.

Hopefully he'll be able to get the money where it needs to go.

"A philanthropic venture capital fund?"

The Acumen Fund, founded by CEO Jaqueline Novogratz represents a great newish way of thinking about philanthropy and donating. Typically, when you donate money, you pick a really good cause, send it over, and it (hopefully) does some good. The Acumen fund has the same goal of improving lives when it gives out its money, with that added benefit that the fund gets it all back to be donated again.

Novogratz' organization is a venture capital fund, which is almost always associated with the for profit sector. But charity in the usual sense is a really unsustainable practice; typically, you give it out, and its gone. The Acumen Fund, on the other hand,

takes a business approach to aid. It takes philanthropic funds and instead of “donating” money, “invests” it in businesses that help the poor – making mosquito nets, delivering babies, providing clean water, and so on. The investors are as rigorous as bankers and are careful to measure results and help businesses they invest in.

The Acumen Fund is a global venture and operates on a budget of 5o million dollars or so, but it seems to bring up a larger issue about "charity" in general that applies to all of us as individuals. There's nothing wrong with being charitable; money donations are obviously hugely beneficial and necessary. But they can also serve to encourage a mentality of "us and them", and perhaps too often result in relationships of dependence as opposed to empowerment and collaboration. Venture capital philanthropies aren't just writing a check, they're getting involved and making sure their investments are not just helpful, but actually grow and improve.

A Charity with an Unusual Interest in the Bottom Line
Investing to Fight Poverty