THERE are a couple of ways to get into the White House. The first is to win a presidential election. Difficult. Then there’s the easy way: You simply sign up for the White House tour, a free self-guided ramble through the eight rooms available for public inspection.

Actually, it’s not so easy anymore. In a simpler time, tourists just lined up at the White House and walked in. As demand increased, a booth was set up, in 1976, to dispense tickets on a first-come-first-served basis.

After the 9/11 attacks, the system changed radically. Now, anyone who wants to tour the White House must apply through the office of his or her representative in Congress, which forwards the names to the White House for clearance. And because the tour is a hot ticket, applications most be submitted at least 21 days ahead, and up to six months in advance. Successful applicants receive an e-mail with the date and time of their tour.

Once they get the green light, visitors show up at the appointed time on 15th Street between E and F Streets and join the line to enter through the southeast gate.

Anyone who has flown on an airline in recent years will recognize the familiar territory of identity checks and electronic scans, although here you do get to keep your shoes on. At the head of the line, rangers from the National Park Service check photo IDs against a list of names. Farther along, a Secret Service officer repeats the process. In the meantime, a park ranger hands out historical pamphlets to children. Someone, somewhere, judged the audience (eighth graders and younger) acutely.

“Dad, listen to this,” a boy behind me said after studying the document. “Benjamin Harrison was the first president to install electricity, but he was so afraid of it that he had the electricians turn the lights on and off.”

A barrage of presidential trivia followed. Dad looked stoic. He should have encouraged his son to do some missionary work with a cluster of adults behind us who were heatedly debating one of history’s great unanswered questions: did Grant lead the Union or the Confederate army?

Once they have passed through a scanner in a flimsy-looking prefab building, visitors proceed at their own pace. There are no tour guides. Instead, Secret Service officers stand ready to answer historical questions. More on them anon.

The ground floor, where the tour begins, deflates expectations. The hallway is dim. The rooms are small and little-used. A velvet rope bars entry. This is frustrating.

I would have liked to inspect the books in the library, but I couldn’t make out the titles. The China Room, organized by Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Edith, to showcase plates and glassware used by the presidents, also tantalized. There they were, the presidential dishes, but well beyond visual range. Ditto the objects in the enticingly bright, golden-hued Vermeil Room, devoted to gilded silver accumulated over the years.

But in the hallway, visitors can step right up to a full-length portrait of Hillary Rodham Clinton, dressed in a black pantsuit and smiling radiantly.

I suspect that foreign visitors, especially if they think of the White House as the American equivalent of the Elysée Palace, come away with the impression that the nerve center of the world’s mightiest nation is an oddly ramshackle, disorganized project with respect to architecture and interior decoration, and an unaccountably humble interpretation of national glory and grandeur. They are right.

Many of the rooms have been used for a variety of purposes over the years. Presidents and first ladies have embarked upon renovations, additions and makeovers.

The Vermeil Room, to take one of many examples, was once a billiard room.

Teddy Roosevelt demolished the conservatories in 1902 and commissioned a thorough renovation of the White House, to drag the place out of the Victorian age and dismantle the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, whom Chester A. Arthur had hired for an 1882 renovation.

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Saying that the housing crisis struck right at the heart of what it means to be middle class, President Barack Obama has begun to flesh out the housing-related proposals he made in his State of the Union speech last Tuesday.  He spoke this morning at Falls Church, Virginia about his housing plans, some pieces of which have already been put into effect by the Departments of Justice (DOJ), Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the eight days since they were first announced. The President spoke only briefly and most of the information about his proposals comes from a Fact Sheet released by the White House just before his speech.

The most ambitious part of the Administration's housing plan is the expansion of several existing programs to streamline refinancing for homeowners with existing high interest rate government or Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgages. The President wants to extend these opportunities to homeowners with standard conforming non-FHA, VA, or GSE mortgages through a new program run through FHA.  To be eligible the homeowner would have meet a few simple criteria:

Borrowers will need to have been current on their loan for the past 6 months and have missed no more than one payment in the 6 months prior. Borrowers must have a current FICO score of 580 to be eligible, a requirement met by approximately 9 in 10 borrowers. The loan they are refinancing is for a single family, owner-occupied principal residence.

A streamlined application process will make it simpler and less expensive for both borrowers and lenders.  Borrowers will not be required to submit a new appraisal or tax return, merely verify current employment.  Those who are not employed may still be eligible if they meet the other requirements and present limited credit risk, however, a lender will need to perform a full underwriting of those borrowers.

The President's plan includes additional steps to reduce program costs, including working with Congress to establish risk-mitigation measures including requiring lenders interested in refinancing deeply underwater loans to write down the balance of these loans before they qualify.   There would be a separate fund created for the program to help the FHA track and manage the risk involved and ensure that it has no effect on the operation of the existing Mutual Mortgage Insurance (MMI) fund.  The estimated $5 to $10 billion cost of the program would be paid by a fee on the largest financial institutions based on their size and the riskiness of their activities

There were also some changes suggested for GSE refinancing programs.  President Obama said he believed the steps he proposes are within the existing authority of the FHFA but the GSEs have not acted so he is calling on Congress to:

Eliminate appraisal costs for all borrowers by using mark-to-market accounting or other alternatives to manual appraisals where Automated Valuation Models cannot be used to determine loan-to-value ratios.Direct the GSEs to require the same streamlined underwriting for new servicers as they do for current servicers to unlock competition and lower borrowing costs. Extend streamlined refinancing to all GSE borrowers including those with significant equity in their home.

There are also proposals to streamline refinancing for borrowers in the USDA and FHA housing programs but the White House noted that the current FHA-to-FHA streamlined refinancing program has met with some resistance from lenders who are afraid to make loans that might compromise their FHA approved lender status.  FHA is removing these loans from their "Compare Ratio" process which should open the program up to more borrowers.

Borrowers utilizing either the Home Affordable Refinancing Program (HARP) or the new FHA-based program would be given an alternative to allow them to rebuild the equity in their home.  This option would require refinancing into a 20 year mortgage and the homeowner would continue to make the old mortgage payment.  The excess money would be applied directly to principal that, along with the shorter term would allow the homeowner to quickly rebuild equity.  To encourage borrowers to make this choice (which also reduces lender risk) the administration is proposing legislation to provide for the GSEs and FHA to cover the loans' closing costs.

A Homeowner Bill of Rights proposed by the Administration would apply to the mortgage servicing system which the White House said "is badly broken and would benefit from a single set of strong federal standards."  Among the items proposed for this Bill of Rights are:

Simple, Easy to Understand Mortgage Forms Disclosure of all known fees and penaltiesNo conflicts of interest between servicers and investors or servicers and junior lien holders.Assistance for at-risk homeowners to include early intervention, continuity of contact, and time and options to avoid foreclosure.Safeguards against inappropriate foreclosure including the right of appeal, certification of proper process.

The President plans to include $15 billion in his Budget for a national effort to hire construction workers to rehabilitate hundreds of thousands of vacant and foreclosed homes and businesses.  Similar to the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, Project Rebuild will enlist expertise and capital from the private sector, focus on property improvements, and expand property solutions like land banks.  The Budget will also provide $1 billion in funding for the Housing Trust Fund to finance the development of affordable housing for extremely low income families while providing jobs in the construction industry.  

Other initiatives which the President talked about this morning or which were covered in the White House Fact Sheet have already been launched in the last few days including a joint investigation with the states into mortgage origination and servicing abuses, expansion of eligibility criteria for HAMP and increased incentives for lenders in the program to reduce principal balances, and a pilot sale announced to transition foreclosed properties into rental housing in certain highly distressed communities which was announced by HUD this morning

The White House said that, while the government cannot fix the housing market on its own, the President believes that responsible homeowners should not have to sit and wait for the market to hit bottom to get relief when there are measures at hand that can make a meaningful difference, including allowing these homeowners to save thousands of dollars by refinancing at today's low interest rates.

Conventional wisdom holds that the President's proposals will be "dead on arrival" when they reach Congress and, in fact the reaction of Speaker of the House John Boehner to the speech was, "How many times are we going to do this?  How many times are we going to suggest programs to help people who can't make payments on their mortgages?  The programs don't work."

A kinder assessment was released in a statement from David H. Stevens, President and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association.  Stevens commented specifically on the Homeowner Bill of Rights saying the Association agrees that a single national set of standards "can help provide confidence and certainty in the real estate market for borrowers, lenders, and servicers alike."

He also commended the administration for "recognizing that more can be done to get our housing market on track.  The programs announced today will give lenders and other stakeholders additional tools to help borrowers and foster a renewed confidence in our real estate finance system."   

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WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is trying to fix a stubborn drag on the economy by allowing millions more homeowners to refinance their mortgages at lower interest rates, even if they owe more than their homes are worth -- tackling a difficult issue of vital concern in states key to President Barack Obama's re-election.

Obama on Wednesday was to draw attention to a proposal he outlined in his State of the Union address: to allow homeowners with privately held mortgages to take advantage of record low rates, for an annual savings of about $3,000 for the average borrower. Obama was detailing his plan during a visit to a northern Virginia community center.

The administration proposal faces a major hurdle in Congress. The program would cost between $5 billion and $10 billion, depending on participation, and would be paid for by a fee on large banks. The administration has tried unsuccessfully before to win support for such a tax on large banks.

The administration estimates that 3.5 million borrowers would have incentive to refinance under the new plan.

The plan would expand the administration's Home Affordable Refinance Program, which allows borrowers with loans backed by government-affiliated mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance at lower rates. About 1 million homeowners have used it, well short of the 4 million to 5 million the Obama administration had expected. Moreover, many "underwater" borrowers -- those who owe more than their homes are worth -- couldn't qualify.

The new administration plan would permit homeowners to refinance their mortgages into loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration. To qualify, borrowers with privately held mortgages would have to have no more than one delinquency in the six months preceding refinancing. Their loans would have to fall within the mortgage limits set by the FHA in their home counties.

Under the program, banks would have to reduce mortgage balances for homeowners who owe more than 140 percent of the value of their homes.

The features of the new proposal were confirmed Wednesday by a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The Wall Street Journal first reported the details Wednesday.

Borrowers 'Bill of Rights'

The Obama administration also plans to announce new industry standards for mortgage servicers, a sort of "bill of rights" for borrowers that would protect them in their transactions.

Obama also is expected to announce a program that would allow the sale of foreclosed homes by Fannie Mae to investors who would then offer the properties for rental. Administration officials say there is a high demand for rental housing and such a program would also sustain neighborhoods by keeping foreclosed homes from falling into disrepair.

A punctured housing bubble was at the center of the recession, prompting widespread foreclosures and leaving millions of homeowners with houses valued at less than their mortgages. Hit hardest were Nevada and Florida, two states that figure prominently in the presidential campaign and that Obama is counting on winning to secure re-election.

Under the refinancing plan, any homeowner current on his or her mortgage could take advantage of historically low lending rates. The average rate for a 30-year mortgage is 3.88 percent.

About 11 million Americans -- roughly 1 in 4 with a mortgage -- are underwater, according to CoreLogic, a real estate data firm.

Half of all U.S. mortgages -- about 30 million home loans -- are owned by nongovernment lenders.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Also see:
Candidates Put Housing Crisis at Fannie and Freddie's Doorstep
Obama State of the Union Plan Inadequate for Housing?

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