Editorial: Why all the secrecy?

Monday, Oct. 8, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

Nevada's foreclosure rate is among the nation's highest, with about 40 homes going into foreclosure each day in Southern Nevada alone.

Still, the situation is "not at crisis proportions," Gov. Jim Gibbons declared Thursday after emerging from a closed-door meeting with lending company executives and other housing experts. Rather, it is an "individual" problem that will have to be addressed "one loan at a time," Gibbons told the Associated Press.

As noted in a story by the Las Vegas Sun's Steve Kanigher on Thursday, the governor's so-called Economic Summit on Housing Stability was a private, invitation-only meeting in which Gibbons said he would determine whether the state could help homeowners who are at risk of losing their houses because of adjustable mortgage rates that have increased or are about to do so.

The result of these no-money-down loans - which helped many people buy homes they otherwise could not afford and became hot commodities for real estate speculators - is that millions of properties across the nation are in foreclosure. And Nevada, with one in every 165 homes in foreclosure, is at the top of the heap.

Congress has vowed to crack down on predatory lending practices and is considering legislation to help people who are losing their homes. President Bush has proposed a measure that would bail out certain homeowners, but Democrats say that plan doesn't go far enough.

Gibbons' solution was to host a private meeting so that lenders could have an "honest and frank conversation" about the crisis - and 40 homes going into foreclosure daily is a crisis - without having to face the issue in a public forum where, undoubtedly, he would have encountered residents who are losing their homes.

The governor concluded Thursday that the state's appropriate role is to educate borrowers through public service announcements and a Web site that will link residents facing foreclosure to counseling services and lenders.

Although it is possible that such efforts could help later, it is too late for them now. And how ironic that Gibbons' solution - public education - started off by shutting the public out of the discussion.