December 12, 2014
Hockett on NYC Eminent Domain
Bob Hockett has posted ‘We Don’t Follow, We Lead’: How New York City Will Save Mortgage Loans by Condemning Them to SSRN. The abstract reads,
This brief invited essay lays out in summary form the eminent domain plan for securitized underwater mortgage loans that the author has been advocating and helping to implement for some years now. It does so with particular attention in this case to New York City, which is now actively considering the plan. The essay’s first part addresses the plan’s necessity. Its second part lays out the plan’s basic mechanics. The third part then systematically addresses and dispatches the battery of remarkably weak legal and policy arguments commonly proffered by opponents of the plan.
Hockett has been advocating this plan for some time in the face of concerted opposition from the financial industry. One industry argument that I have found to be over the top is that lenders will refuse to lend in communities that employ eminent domain to address the foreclosure crisis. Hockett writes,
Another policy argument made by some members of the securitization industry is that using eminent domain to purchase loans will dry up the sources of mortgage credit, rendering the American dream of homeownership unattainable. The financial services industry and its legislative supporters have made this kind of claim against regulatory and consumer protection proposals emerging from national, state, or municipal legislatures.
One problem with this argument is that private credit has not flowed to non-wealthy mortgage borrowers since the crash. Federal lenders and guarantors are nearly the only game in town, and they are likely to remain so until the underwater PLS loan logjam is cleared.
Another problem with the credit withdrawal argument is that it characterizes a benefit as a burden. The housing bubble was, like most of the more devastating bubbles through history, the upshot of an over-extension of credit. Lenders extended excess credit through reverse redlining and other predatory lending practices perpetrated or aided and abetted by participants in the securitization industry itself. Hence the securitization industry’s warning that credit might not be overextended in the future is a warning of something that might well be desirable. (142-43, footnotes omitted)
Given that lenders always rush to lend to countries that have recently defaulted on their sovereign debt, I don’t find the credit withdrawal argument to be particularly convincing here. But it may succeed in convincing some local governments not to proceed with their eminent domain strategies. I do hope, however, that at least one locality will follow through during the current foreclosure crisis. That way, we will at least have a proof of concept for the next foreclosure crisis.
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