Today's housing and mortgage crisis has unleashed a variety of plans seeking to find solutions that appease everyone. Some of these plans have or will fail because they help too few in need, or they simply put off the issue into the future when we will have to face the same factors again. Others fall flat as they lay all of the blame and ultimate risk on only one party, either the borrower or the lender. Several soley rely on the Federal Government to provide the "bail out", in other words, taxpayers' dollars to pay for poor credit decisions.

There are a series of goals that need to be met for any plan to be successful. Some are shared by a number of interested parties. Simply stated, these goals are: Elimination or reduction of foreclosures; Elimination of short sales and write downs, Promulgation of realistic refinancing options; and Stabilization of real estate values. If these goals are met, the logical conclusion would be that we would have been successful in solving the mortgage crisis in the United States. There is, in fact, a long term solution that is available that avoids all of the pitfalls enumerated in the first paragraph. This solution is named the "Appreciating America Plan". Before describing this plan, it is helpful to review some of the current plans and their shortcomings:

- Hope Now Alliance ' This is the voluntary program in which loan servicers attempt to modify loans for borrowers who are currently in default or have a reasonable likelihood to be so in the near future. The plan has been touted because under it servicers modified approximately one million loans. However, 75% of these "modifications" were simply payment plans for the borrowers to try to repay amounts that were overdue even though they could not afford to pay these amounts when they were due a few months ago. The remaining 25% of the homeowners saw their interest rates frozen as low as 5% for three to five years. At that time, the loans will convert back to their previous "unaffordable" terms. Not much of a solution.

- Dodd/Frank/HUD proposals ' These proposed plans envision refinancing the current adjustable rate mortgages with FHA fixed rate loans at approx. 80% of the current value of the home. While there is a notion that the FHA and the borrowers will split some of the appreciation in the future, the current servicers of the mortgages are required to immediately write down any unpaid balances. Why servicers of the first mortgages would agree to write off a large portion of their debt without any chance of future recovery is in doubt, the idea that servicers holding second mortgages would voluntarily write off the entire second mortgage to aid the first mortgage holder is rediculous. There must be some recognition that there must be a possible recovery in the future in consideration of the current reduction of the mortgage.

- Authorizing Bankruptcy Courts to Write Off Mortgage Debt ' This is a tremendously dangerous idea to allow courts to re-write contract terms and, effectively, write down loans. All mortgages will become much more expensive given the uncertainly the owners of future loans will have. No longer will the mortgage contract control the transaction. Courts will be the arbiter of each mortgage. Beyond these issues, the constitutional concerns are real.

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