Housing Assistance: An Inventory of Fiscal Year 2010 Programs, Tax Expenditures, and Other Activities

U.S. Government Accountability Office

Making Home Affordable (MHA)

Administering Agency/Entity Department of the Treasury
Short Description Includes several housing programs: the primary program, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), shares the cost of reducing monthly payments on first lien mortgages with mortgage holders/investors and provides incentives to servicers, borrowers, and mortgage holders/investors. Also, the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program assists homeowners seeking a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure; Home Price Decline Protection Incentives help modify loans in areas with steep home price declines; the Principal Reduction Alternative incentivizes investors to use principal reduction for certain mortgages; the Second Lien Modification Program assists homeowners with an eligible second lien mortgage and HAMP modification; the Treasury/ Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Second Lien Program pays servicers and investors if they partially or fully extinguish second liens on an FHA Short Refinance; and incentives for modifications of mortgages insured by FHA or Rural Housing Service.
Primary Purpose Emergency assistance to housing market or current homeowner
Type of Housing Supported Homeownership
Type of Assistance Other
Fiscal Year 2010 Obligations In February 2009, Treasury announced that MHA would use up to $50 billion in funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Treasury subsequently reduced its total obligations of its TARP-funded housing programs to $45.6 billion, of which $29.9 billion has been allocated to the Making Home Affordable program. Treasury officials estimated that the last MHA incentive payment would likely occur sometime in mid-2018. Actual payments made in fiscal year 2010 for all programs under the MHA program were $484 million.

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