CNN has an article about how the Hope Now coalition claims to have helped a million homeowners. At least that is what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says. CNN isn’t so sure:

But of those borrowers, only 278,000 actually saw the terms of their mortgages modified. Their lenders either froze or reduced their interest rates, and may have reduced their balances as well to make loans more affordable.

Let’s think about this for a few minutes. According to the guys over at the Census Bureau, there are roughly 303.5 million Americans right now. That number of course rises every minute. Also according to them, roughly 69% of homes are owner-occupied — we own it, or someone we live with does.

Mr. Paulson is asking us to believe that one out of every 304 people has been helped by Hope Now. If you were to fill Robert Kennedy Memorial Stadium with random people, you should be able to find roughly 186 helped by Hope Now; if you filled it with only random homeowners, you should find about 271 people. Doesn’t that seem a bit high to you? Could it be that Mr. Paulson is counting all the way back to the inception of Hope Now’s helpline in 2004?

And where are these people? I am sitting in a metropolitan area where 9.87% of our 22,000 current listings are the Repo market — that’s over 2100 properties! Where are they? How are they helping people in Cleveland, where things are even worse?

The President told us in December that Hope Now was prepared to help 1,200,000 homeowners. If Mr. Paulson’s numbers are right, does that mean we are rapidly coming to the end of what they can do a mere 4 months later?

And what exactly is Hope Now doing to help these people if they are not actually getting loan terms modified? Mr. Paulson admitted that “Loan modifications alone increased 19% from December to January….” Fewer than 1 out of 5 people being “helped” actually got anything that would make their loans more affordable in the long term. Do you count as being “helped” if you call and tell them a sad story? How about if they “help” you by telling you it’s time to consider a short sale, or mailing the keys to the bank?

And one last thing. “Everybody” agrees that none of these mortgage assistance plans should help investors, that they made their beds and should lie in them. So what about the renters those investors leased to? They will most likely lose their homes too, often with only 3 days notice. Do you think you could coordinate finding a new home, packing everything you own, and moving in 72 hours? Probably not, and neither can they. Every day someone in my office deals with the collateral damage of this problem. Where is Hope –Now or any other time — for them?