The New York Times reports today:
New York has been among the most aggressive states in trying to protect homeowners from foreclosure, granting new legal protections and turning courts across the state into teeming negotiation centers working to keep people in their homes.
But four years into the foreclosure crisis, the state’s courts are largely at a stalemate, facing an estimated 100,000 foreclosure cases — a record number — with tens of thousands more expected. Courts statewide have been mired in often hopeless cases involving loans that have left bus drivers and grocery clerks, among others, owing $700,000 or more on homes that have fallen in value.
As the Obama administration works on new mortgage-relief programs, lawyers and officials say New York’s experience shows the limits of a state’s ability to cope with the national foreclosure morass. “We are a shining example of somebody’s best efforts falling short through no fault of our own,” said Paul Lewis, a senior official in the New York court system who has been helping coordinate foreclosure cases since the start of the crisis.
So here you have a noble-sounding government program to help out people facing foreclosure. But what happens in the real world with noble-sounding government programs to help people? Government never has the resources to give help to all who want help. So government must ration its help.
How does government ration help? It could sell the help to the highest bidders but that rarely happens. Instead the government creates long waits in line. Those who are willing to wait and to fill out endless paperwork, they get the limited government help. People who place a higher value on their time, they skip the government help.
This holds for foreclosure relief or government healthcare or government scholarships to college.
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