Why Should Mortgage Firms Escape the Pain?

* The story “Middle Class Between a Rock and a Hard Place” (Feb. 7) obviously touched a raw nerve, for it seemed to go through the Valley like a sonic boom. It popped up in the conversation of literally every person I encountered that day.

I too am angered, but I am not angry at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, nor am I angry at the government. I am angry in being placed in a position in which I must ask other middle-class citizens, who just like myself are struggling to make ends meet, to take on yet another burden in extending help to me.

Let’s face it folks, when we run to FEMA for aid, we are running to ourselves and paying twice for the pleasure.

FEMA is taxpayer dollars. Small Business Administration loans are taxpayer dollars. We will pay for these loans and grants both as givers and receivers. How many of us are really in a position to take on any more personal debt to repair our properties? How many of us feel we can collectively increase our tax burdens?

In this picture, I am beginning to wonder why our business partners, those holders of our mortgages who are the true “homeowners,” should face this “act of God” unscathed? Why are the home dwellers facing the burden alone? Mortgage holders are, after all, businesses. These institutions know all business has some inherent risk.

Perhaps the time has come for us to unite and collectively tell our business partners that their greed is showing and it is time for them to assume some of the collective loss.

I am not calling for anything but a reasonable and workable solution. Perhaps a three-month waiver of interest (not principal) might be a universally acceptable formula.

I do not claim to have the solution, but I feel strongly that lending institutions must become participants in solving the problem.

A. A. NELSON

Tarzana