Over the past few weeks, The Maine Monitor has shared several stories by Sawyer Loftus, an investigative reporter for the Bangor Daily News’ Maine Focus team. These stories appear on The Monitor website as part of a collaboration between The Maine Monitor and Maine Focus, the investigative team of the Bangor Daily News, a partnership to strengthen investigative journalism in Maine.
Among the stories Loftus reported as part of a fellowship with the ProPublica Local Reporting Network was an investigation into a U.S. Department of Agriculture rural mortgage program.
The investigation found the USDA failed to follow its own guidance for a rural mortgage program, taking years to foreclose on delinquent loans. As a result, 55 Maine borrowers racked up, on average, $110,000 in additional debt before the agency moved to take the homes.
Borrowers who can’t pay risk having the government garnish their wages or federal benefits such as Social Security.
“It really undermines the concept of giving access to homeownership to a population who might not otherwise have been able to afford it,” said Rhiannon Hampson, former USDA rural development director for Maine who stepped down in January before President Donald Trump was inaugurated. “The irony, with all of these fees piled on, is that they can’t afford to get out of it.”
The recent wave of foreclosure filings in Maine underscores the government’s failure to monitor a mortgage program that since its founding in 1949 has poured tens of billions of tax dollars into giving the poorest Americans a shot at homeownership.
You can listen to the episode here. Tune in to listen live the first Thursday of every month at 4 p.m. on WERU 89.9 FM.
