From The Mayor (G): we're "[t]aking these troubled loans off the hands of the [predatory] banks ... and we're paying them fair market value." The video just gives you a whole lot of confidence that they know what they're doing, does't it?
The elephant in the room Her Honor doesn't address about one big reason why Richmond has "destabilized neighborhoods" and isn't enjoying the high prices so typical of other San Francisco Bay Area housing makerts is the horrible crime problem. If there's one thing Richmond leads the way on -- besides novel eminent domain usage that is -- it's crime: the city is consistently at the top of lists of the nation's most violent municipalities. By all accounts, Richmond should be a housing paradise: across the Bay from prosperous Marin County, it's outside the fog belt and has wonderful weather most of the time, and has miles of Bay shoreline, beautiful hills, Golden Gate views, a working harbor, big employers, and easy access via highways and public transportation to everywhere else in the Bay Area.
So it's likely not predatory lending that had turned much of the city into what some call a "warzone," and more likely the fact that people can't tolerate living in Richmond that keeps the housing market depressed. And taking mortgages isn't addressing that problem at all.
And the idea is spreading. El Monte in So Cal is also contemplating Mortgage Resolution Partners' package.
