A few months after Congress passed a landmark law directing the federal government to dismantle segregation in the nation's housing, President Nixon's housing chief began plotting a stealth campaign.

The plan, George Romney wrote in a confidential memo to aides, was to use his power as secretary of Housing and Urban Development to remake America's housing patterns, which he described as a “high-income white noose” around the black inner city.

The 1968 Fair Housing Act, passed months earlier in the tumultuous aftermath of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, directed the government to “affirmatively further” fair housing. Romney believed those words gave him the authority to pressure predominantly white communities to build more affordable housing and end discriminatory zoning practices.

Romney ordered HUD officials to reject applications for water, sewer and highway projects from cities and states where local policies fostered segregated housing.

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The Obama administration’s primary program to tackle the housing crisis and help homeowners who were facing foreclosure, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), fell far short of its goals. But a new report from the Federal Reserve of Chicago, the federal government, and multiple universities blamed the nation’s biggest banks for the program’s shortcomings.

According to the report — from Ohio State University, Columbia Business School, the University of Chicago, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve of Chicago — big banks could have prevented an additional 800,000 foreclosures had they been better equipped to administer the federal modification program, Pro Publica reports:

But while evidence of these problems was pervasive, it was always hard to quantify the damage. Just how many more people could have qualified under the administration’s mortgage modification program if the banks had done a better job? In other words, how many people have been pushed toward foreclosure unnecessarily?

A thorough study released last week provides one number, and it’s a big one: about 800,000 homeowners. [...]

Unfortunately for homeowners, most mortgages are handled by banks that haven’t been properly staffed and thus have modified far fewer loans. If these worse-performing banks had simply modified loans at the same pace as their better performing peers, then HAMP would have produced about 800,000 more modifications. Instead of about 1.2 million modifications by the end of this year, HAMP would have resulted in about 2 million.

The report largely blamed poor training and poor ...

Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank have let foreclosed homes in black and Latino neighborhoods lapse into disrepair, while bank-owned homes in mainly white neighborhoods are better cared-for, according to housing advocates.

The National Fair Housing Alliance, a non-profit group, brought a formal complaint to the Department of Housing and Urban Development last week alleging that Wells Fargo violated the Fair Housing Act by failing to keep up homes in minority neighborhoods. Today, the group announced they are also filing a second complaint, against U.S. Bank.

Earlier this month, the group released a survey, which was funded in part by HUD, of more than 1,000 unoccupied, foreclosed homes across the country owned by unspecified banks. When a house is foreclosed upon, the bank that takes it over is responsible for maintaining it. The report cites evidence — photos and interviews with neighbors — showing houses becoming dilapidated under banks' watch.

The complaint against Wells Fargo claims that among more than 200 homes surveyed, those in black and Latino neighborhoods were much more likely to have yards filled with trash, broken doors, damaged windows, and other signs of neglect. Fewer homes in those neighborhoods had "for sale" signs visible. For example, 68 out of 149 homes in black and Latino neighborhoods had damaged roofs, compared to only nine out of 69 properties in white neighborhoods.

The study looked at homes owned by Wells Fargo in Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Dallas, Miami, ...

Progressive Democrats in Congress have been calling for President Obama to fire Edward DeMarco, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, for DeMarco’s refusal to grant government sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the ability to write down mortgages on a wide scale. As the regulator of Fannie and Freddie, it is the FHFA, and ultimately DeMarco, that decides how much relief the mortgage giants will provide to troubled homeowners.

DeMarco has been justifying his stance by pointing to a study claiming that widespread reduction of mortgage principal would cost taxpayers $100 billion. But this week, an analyst from broker-dealer Amherst Securities said told a Senate subcommittee that DeMarco’s estimate is bunk:

Federal Housing Finance Agency analysis used to prevent principal reduction on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans was seriously flawed, according to one leading analyst.

“We have reviewed the study and have a number of very substantial objections,” said Amherst Securities Senior Managing Director Laurie Goodman before a Senate subcommittee Thursday, who gathered additional data via telephone.

Goodman cited several problems with the study, including that it did not factor in bank incentives from the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and underestimated the number of homeowners severely underwater by not using city level housing data. She said that it the study was done correctly, “it will be clear that forgiveness is the better solution for the bulk of the two-thirds of their book of business without mortgage ...

Despite the economic downturn, the rate of homelessness across the United States decreased 1 percent from 2009 to 2011, according to a report that the National Alliance to End Homelessness released earlier this week.

But at a news conference Wednesday in Washington to discuss the report, officials who advocate for the homeless said they were still concerned about the future, as the slashing of the government's budget has resulted in a decline in federal dollars for the poor.

"This is just the beginning of another year of people sinking deeper and deeper into poverty," Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., said Wednesday at the National Press Club.