HuffPO-
On a morning in February, less than a month into his presidency, Barack Obama walked onto a stage at a gym in Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona, prepared to talk about the wave of home foreclosures wrecking neighborhoods across the county.
The plan Obama sketched out on Feb. 18, 2009 suggested a new use for taxpayer money: to pay mortgage companies to restructure those home loans held by struggling families. Together with a refinancing program, the plan would prevent “the worst consequences of said crisis from wreaking even greater havoc on the economy,” the new president said.
Georgina Solis, a teacher’s aide at the school, listened closely as she watched the speech on a TV in a classroom. Her husband had recently lost his job as a maintenance worker, and the family had fallen behind on their mortgage payments.
“I gave my vote to Obama because he’s a new hope,” Solis said in an interview at the time with the Arizona Republic. “I hope I’ll be able to keep my home because of his policy.”
But the clear path to recovery Obama described never materialized outside that Arizona gym.