Government plan would turn repossessed homes into rentals

By Karoun Demirjian

Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2011 | 10:30 p.m.

A long-simmering government plan to convert repossessed homes into rentals could become part of President Barack Obama’s jobs plan.

The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C., with close ties to the White House, has been pushing the president to include a plan to renovate repossessed homes as part of his strategy to get America working again.

“Those properties shouldn’t sit idle; they can be improved, retrofitted, rented, and then sold to non-profits or private operators,” John Podesta, the president and CEO of CAP, told reporters Tuesday at the national renewable energy conference in Las Vegas.

The construction jobs that would result from such a venture, he said, could be “the short-term kick we need to get unemployment down. At the end of the day, to effectively deal with the long-term fiscal position in the United States, you’ve gotta get people back to work.”

The hit-two-birds-with-one-stone approach is bound to be controversial, but if the funding could be secured, Las Vegas would be a prime target market.

“This is basically in an urban context, because you can’t do one or two here or there; it’s where you can amass enough quantity where that it’ll matter,” Podesta said.

Las Vegas leads the nation in foreclosures, and homes that had mortgages with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration or the Veterans’ Administration would count as government repossessed.

Las Vegas’s large population provides a ready demand for affordable rental property, and there’s also significant demand in the construction sector for work.

Podesta said he expected the president to stress building efficiency in his upcoming speech on the economy and jobs, planned for next week. Obama has said his plan could create up to a million jobs nationwide.