Rep. Richardson's Personal Foreclosure Crisis
The home mortgage crisis has really hit home for one member of Congress, freshman Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.), whose Sacramento home was recently seized by the bank.
Richardson was elected last year in a hotly contested special-election race to succeed congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Calif.), who died of cancer.
Even as she loaned her campaign $60,000 to win the House seat, Richardson stopped paying her mortgage. And her house, which she bought in 2006, slipped into default, according to Capitol Weekly newspaper, which covers California politics and government.
"While being elevated to Congress in a 2007 special election, Richardson apparently stopped making payments on her new Sacramento home, and eventually walked away from it, leaving nearly $600,000 in unpaid loans and fees," the newspaper reports.
And what a rough couple of weeks it has been for her. Her father died on May 6. And now comes the foreclosure revelation.
While Congress has been voting on numerous foreclosure-related bills this year, Richardson didn't vote on two of the biggest pieces of legislation -- the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, and another measure to help local governments buy and sell foreclosed properties.
To read the entire Capitol Weekly story, click here.
Richardson's chief of staff, Kimberly Parker, tells us her boss will have a statement on her home foreclosure, perhaps later this evening.
By Mary Ann Akers |
May 21, 2008; 5:55 PM ET
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Posted by: Uno | May 22, 2008 9:51 AM
What a joke this is. I am sure she walked away and hoped it would all go away. She can't even pay the bills she has and we expect her to be able to make decisions that affect all Americans. And then she lies about the whole thing... shameful to say the least. She should resign...
Posted by: Dale | May 22, 2008 12:56 PM
She should go home. You never know when you're going to discover $100,000 in your freezer.
Posted by: William Jefferson | May 22, 2008 4:40 PM
She should be frog-marched out of the capitol
Posted by: Anonymous | May 27, 2008 5:34 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
"Even as she loaned her campaign $60,000 to win the House seat, Richardson stopped paying her mortgage."
And yet we let her decide how America's finances are managed. She should resign in shame immediately.