By Steve Tetreault STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Posted: Mar. 8, 2012 | 2:15 p.m.

WASHINGTON — People who have lost their homes in foreclosure could be given another chance to buy a house under a bill introduced Thursday in Congress.

Legislation by Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., creates a federal program that would insure fresh loans to foreclosed owners, even after their credit scores have taken big hits.

Applicants would need to meet a series of requirements to obtain a new 30-year fixed rate mortgage insured by the Federal Housing Administration, including having made rent payments on time over the past 12 months.

“A lot of people have been foreclosed or short-saled so now they have this negative mark on their credit,” said Heck, who represents one of the congressional districts hardest hit by the mortgage crisis. “But now they are in a position because housing prices have dropped that they could actually buy a home and afford it, but they can’t get a loan because of the foreclosure or short sale on their record.”

The new legislation will be among the topics discussed when the House Financial Services Committee convenes a field hearing on foreclosures next Thursday at the Clark County Commission chambers.

Representatives of the Nevada state foreclosure mediation program, the Nevada Association of Mortgage Professionals, the Nevada Association of Realtors and the Nevada Credit Union League are set to testify at the hearing, which starts at 9:30 a.m.

Heck said the bill emerged from discussions among Realtors, mortgage brokers and others in Southern Nevada. “We were trying to look at ways to get people back into homes by giving them a second chance at home ownership,” he said.

The Nevada Association of Realtors issued an endorsement through President Blane Johnson.

“We support any effort to help responsible homeowners realize the dream of owning their own home,” Johnson said.

Democrat John Oceguera, the Nevada Assembly speaker who is challenging Heck in November’s election, said he was not impressed.

Oceguera said the bill was “too little, too late.”

“After witnessing 61 straight months of Nevadans suffering from the highest foreclosure rates in the country … Joe Heck woke up to the fact that it is an election year and introduced legislation addressing a critical issue Nevadans are facing,” Oceguera said. “He’s just playing politics.”

Heck contended the promise of federal insurance will provide an incentive for banks to participate. “The banks and especially the small community banks, they are eager to loan,” he said.

The bill authorizes an insurance fund capped at $200 billion. Depending on the size of loans accepted for banking, Heck said it could cover more than 1 million new owners.

People with a net worth of more than $1 million would not qualify. Also not eligible are people who abandoned a home to a strategic default in the past 10 years.

It also contains further protections, he said, such as requiring new mortgage payments not to exceed the amount the owner has paid in rent over the past year.

Heck’s bill joins several measures that have been submitted to Congress as possible solutions to ease the mortgage crisis.

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., last month introduced a bill that would allow people to remain in their homes as renters after being foreclosed upon, with the possibility of resuming ownership after five years.

With Nevada’s home foreclosure rate highest in the nation, the issue will play a big role in 2012 elections.

Oceguera said Thursday he would focus his campaign on jobs, the economy, education and the home foreclosure crisis that has devastated Southern Nevada. He noted that nearly seven out of 10 Clark County homeowners are underwater in their mortgages, including himself.

“I think we’ve got a lot of work to do there,” Oceguera said in an interview. “We’ve got to do something still for the people in the middle. The middle class are the ones who are suffering.”

Oceguera on Thursday filed to run in the 3rd Congressional District, which Heck represents. Oceguera will have some primary competition but is backed by the state and national Democratic parties as the chosen candidate to take on Heck in the fall general election.

Former U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, the Democrat who lost to Heck in 2010, also filed paperwork Thursday to run for Congress. This time she is seeking the 1st Congressional District seat held by U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat who is running for U.S. Senate against Heller.

In Congress, Titus supported the Obama administration programs aimed at helping people stay in their homes or renegotiate their mortgages at lower interest rates. She said more needs to be done to reduce the principal Nevadans owe on homes that have lost value, in many cases more than half.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Laura Myers contributed to this story. Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760. Follow him on Twitter @STetreaultDC.

Garages may have started out as the place to store cars, but gradually they’ve become the place to store almost everything else, from sports equipment to dog food to holiday decorations.

As the weather gets warmer and the spring-cleaning urge hits, it’s a good time to take stock of your garage. Is it a functional space or just a repository for junk? Are there more logical ways to store your belongings?

Before you rush out and buy new shelving and cabinets, professional organizer Cindy Tyner recommends putting some serious thought into how you want to use your garage. She says the No. 1 mistake people make is pulling everything out of the garage first and then getting overwhelmed when they try to cram it all back in.

“People go out and buy things, like storage systems and bins, and say, ‘This is what I need to get me organized,’ but the things don’t fit the purposes they need,” said Tyner, who owns an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based organizing business called Functional Spaces.

Once you’ve decided how to use your garage, here are some tips to help you finish the job:

• Pick a sunny day and clear out all of your belongings. Decide what will stay, what can be donated and what should be thrown away.

“If you haven’t used it in a year, you need to ask yourself: ‘Does it make sense to keep it?’ If it’s important to keep it, how can you use it? If it’s a family heirloom, should it be sitting in the garage where you can have a variety of problems and moisture?” said Sean Hunt, president of Garage Specialists Inc., a San Bernardino, Calif.-based company that cleans and organizes a few hundred garages a year.

• Once the garage is cleared, sweep and wash the floors and walls. A fresh coat of paint can brighten the walls, and paints made especially for garage floors protect them from oil and gas stains, and prolong the life of the concrete. Home Depot, for example, sells 1-gallon cans of Rust-Oleum Epoxy Concrete Floor Paint for $31.97. A gallon covers up to 400 square feet.

• Consider what kind of storage you need. Costs vary significantly, from $40 plastic shelving to $350 steel shelving. You can use old kitchen cabinets or buy new ones. Gladiator GarageWorks, a division of Whirlpool Corp., makes heavy-duty plastic tracks that run along the wall and can be fitted with cabinets, hooks or baskets. A two-pack of 48-inch-long tracks is $29.99; a six-pack of bins that fits into the tracks is $14.99.

Kris Nielson, the CEO of Monkey Bar Storage, a Rexburg, Idaho-based company that makes steel shelving systems, said people can spend as much as $10,000 on custom garages with fancy flooring, refrigerators and other perks. His company, which has 68 outlets in the United States and Canada, charges an average of $1,500 per garage to install steel shelving systems, which he says are designed for durability and efficiency.

“This is not your dining room. It’s your garage,” he said.

• Use all your available space. For items you only need occasionally, such as holiday decorations, consider overhead storage units. A 4-square-foot Racor platform, for example, holds up to 250 pounds and can be lowered with a cable system. Hayloft makes a smaller, less expensive overhead storage system, measuring 45 square inches.

• Store things close to where you need them, and in logical places. All the gardening equipment should go together, for example, and the bike helmets should be next to the bikes.

“Everything has got to have a home. Otherwise, it just gets piled up and it’s a snowball effect,” Hunt said.

• Store some things outside. Consider a deck box for children’s toys or a storage shed for gardening tools. Lowe’s sells Rubbermaid’s Roughneck storage shed for $299, for example. Tyner says you just need to make sure to use the new space properly and don’t let it become your new catchall for junk.

• Consider hiring an organizer. Organizers can give you good ideas about how to use your space and keep you on task as you’re trying to decide what to keep and what to toss. Costs vary by region and project. Organizers will charge you more, for example, to buy and install storage units than to work with units you already have.

Hunt said his company will fix up a garage in a day for an average of $1,500 or so. They also come back and do tuneups when you need them. Tyner gives free 30- to 60-minute consultations and then charges $40 an hour, although she notes that organizers’ rates vary widely by region.

31st annual North Lake Tahoe SnowFest! Starts Tonight

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — A major renovation at Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe earned initial approval last week from a Washoe County planning board.
The projects covered under the special-use permit “are pretty well thought out, good for the community and good for their business,” Richard Cieri, a Washoe County Board of Adjustment member, told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
The proposal would add new terrain, additional lifts, snowmaking improvements and various facility enhancements, all part of a $23.5 million effort that would take about 15 years to complete. According to the RGJ story, work is expected to begin next year.
Among the proposed improvements, the existing Ponderosa and Galena lifts would combine into a single high-speed, 5,000-foot lift, according to the resort, and the Lakeview lift also would be expanded.
Also planned are a mountaintop restaurant with 270-degree views from Lake Tahoe to Virginia Peak, and a new guest locker building.
Additional changes include the expansion of the main lodge to include a remodeled and larger Rosebuds Children’s center, plus a new First Aid facility.
A new Mountain Operations Center at the Slide Bowl would replace the current shop near the main lodge. Snowmaking improvements are also in the plan and include the construction of a one-acre pond to increase storage capacity near the existing tank above the Galena terrain.
The planning board’s approval is final unless an appeal is filed with the County Commission. The West Washoe Valley and the Galena-Steamboat citizen advisory boards unanimously voted in support, according to the RGJ.
Further, planning for a separate project that would expand skiing and snowboarding services onto the adjacent 99-acre Atoma parcel, located on the north side of State Highway 431, is under way.
“This open, mosaic-glade style skiing would make for a unique lower level snow experience combining open runs with pods of trees intermixed throughout the new area,” according to the resort in a previous press release. “The run from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the Atoma area would become one of the longest low level trails in the Lake Tahoe area … at almost 3.5 miles.”
According to the proposal, the long run — dubbed the “Around-the-World experience” — would transition trails through trees within the resort’s Galena terrain and include a skier bridge over the Mt. Rose Highway, near the entrance to the main lodge, that would connect existing trails to the new Atoma terrain.
Along with the bridge are proposed new lifts, highlighted by the Atoma return lift, an approximately 3,500-foot-long ride that would cross the Mt. Rose Highway to return skiers and snowboarders to the main trails.
The resort is working with representatives of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest to initiate an environmental analysis of the proposal, in compliance with the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act. The analysis could take two years to complete.