Point Austin: When a House Is Not a Home
Workers and homeowners seek justice from home builders - Alliance for Home Buyer Jus­tice campaign took its national pilgrimage to the Centex headquarters there (now a subsidiary of Pulte), demanding that the company "take responsibility" for its role in the national financial crisis. Reportedly, the group chanted outside the building, inflated a pig balloon, and then marched into the Centex offices – where they were quickly escorted out again by security cops. But maybe, just maybe, they planted a small public seed of doubt about the roles that huge corporate builders now play in the national housing market...  Monday night's anecdotal testimony ranged from construction workers denied their lawful wages to self-described "upscale" homeowners complaining that their wealthy subdivisions were being financially undermined by cheaper homes on smaller lots – not necessarily people in the same social action universe. (Pulte and Centex actually got off fairly easy; the evening's most popular whipping boy was KB Homes.)  See related photos

Austin Workers Defense Project - Action Against Centex/Pulte Homes for Unpaid Wages in Austin
Workers Defense Project and community supporters gathered at the Central Texas Division of Centex Homes in North Austin to demand payment for unpaid wages. A group of four workers report they are owed $2,700 for carpentry work they performed on three homes. In May of 2009, Marcos Cuevas, Franklin Barahona, Salvador Gamiño, and Santos Arriaza worked for a subcontractor of Centex to perform carpentry work on Centex homes. The subcontractor never paid the four workers nearly $3,000 in wages.

Point Austin: When a House Is Not a Home
One sign that the housing market is still in pretty bad shape is that when protesters show up at a home builder's office doorstep – it's no longer there. That's what happened Monday for a group of union activists who wanted to send a message to Centex Homes, heretofore locally headquartered out on Highway 183 North. At least, that's where it was until last weekend, when the company's recent merger with Michigan-based Pulte Homes resulted in the closing of the Austin administration office. Centex management has scurried back to Dallas – layoffs and consolidation continue under the Pulte Homes umbrella, now the biggest national home builder after the August $1.4 billion stock deal.

Protest Group Storms Centex Lobby
Converging on North Texas from across the country, a group of angry homeowners and workers took a loud protest to the front steps of one of the nation's biggest homebuilders.  At the headquarters of Centex in Dallas, homeowners and members of the Laborers International Union of North America (LiUNA) chanted outside, then walked inside to protest in the lobby until they were kicked out.  A short time later, the group inflated a two-story-tall pig designed to call attention to the company's profits and what protestors say is a role in the collapse of the real estate industry.  Many economists believe the bursting of the real estate bubble was a major factor in the recession and faltering of the American economy over the last 18 months.  See related photos

Advisory from LIUNA: Homeowners and Workers Touring Across U.S. Stop in Indianapolis to Tell Largest Homebuilding Corporation: "Stop Foreclosing on the American Dream"
Homeowners and workers will travel 3,300 miles, stopping in 10 cities across the U.S., to tell Pulte Homes – the largest corporate homebuilder in America – to stop foreclosing on the American Dream.  Riding their "Build America so America Works" RV, the tour will highlight the role Pulte Homes and its smaller partners like DR Horton, KB Home and Lennar played in crashing the U.S. housing market. The market collapse has resulted in the loss of 2 million construction jobs, nearly 3 million foreclosures and billions of dollars in lost retirement savings. In Indiana more than 46,400 homes have been foreclosed in 2009 alone. Indiana unemployment is currently 9.8 percent, in large part due to the loss of 29,000 construction jobs since the start of 2007. Leading homebuilders can help prevent another crisis but they are continuing many of the same practices that contributed to the problems in our economy today.

Why Treasury Needs a Plan B for Mortgages
AFTER months of playing pretend, the Treasure Department conceded last week that the Home Affordable Modification Program, its plan to aid troubled homeowners by changing the terms of their mortgages, was a dud. The 10-month-old program is going nowhere, the Treasury said, because big institutions charged with implementing it are dragging their feet."The banks are not doing a good enough job," said Michael S. Barr, assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions, in an article published last Sunday in The New York Times.

Quarter of borrowers in anti-foreclosure plan are behind
About 25 percent of borrowers helped under the administration's massive foreclosure prevention plan have already fallen behind on their new mortgage payments, according to government data that raise new questions about the program's effectiveness. The delinquency figures reflect the latest troubles of the program, known as Making Home Affordable. Earlier this week, Treasury officials announced a campaign to put new pressure on lenders to do more to move struggling homeowners into loans with easier terms. So far, more than 650,000 borrowers have been enrolled into the initial, or "trial," phase of the program and have seen their payments lowered by an average of $640 a month, or 40 percent. But a recent survey of large mortgage servicers published by the Treasury Department found that that more than 25 percent of borrowers in the program were not current on their trial payments.

Bankrupt Home Builder Resurfaces
Local 2 Investigates has learned the owner of Royce Homes is seeing a lot of green. Fifteen miles away in the Lakes of Cypress Forest, we found new home builder, Vestalia Homes, building houses. John Speer, listed with the Secretary of State as the only board manager of Vestalia, opened the company Sept. 29, 2008, just three weeks after we reported Speer closed the doors of Royce because of financial problems. The Web site for Vestalia Homes touts "decades of experience," with no mention of Royce. "If they're gonna rely on those decades of home building experience, they might as well disclose where they came from and what they're basing that claim on," said Monica Russo with the Houston Better Business Bureau.

Royce Homes under fire from local homeowners, charity
There are thousands of people in the Greater Houston area living in houses built by Royce Homes. For new homebuyers, those houses represented the culmination of a dream. But that dream has become a nightmare for homeowners like Nicholas Howard. He says he's been forced to contend with what he calls faulty construction by a homebuilder that filed for bankruptcy last year. Attorneys have filed a lawsuit against Royce Homes, claiming the builder misappropriated $400,000 raised from an annual golf tournament and skeet-shooting event – money that should have been paid to charity.

Family: Condemn Our $500K Moldy House
Homeowner Greg Cole said his John Wieland home has been trouble for nine years. This past summer the family finally moved out. They are on an Internet campaign against Wieland. They said they can't spend the holidays in their home in the North Hampton subdivision in Marietta because of the multiple species of mold...Greg Cole said that later this week he will ask the Health Department to condemn his house.

This was the biggest mistake and the worse investment I have ever made in my life!
Now I am stuck with a new home that is a piece of junk and I am condemned to a life of debt and a home I will never be able to sell. After 1 year, the entire house started cracking in half. There were large cracks in the brick, the sheetrock, the drywall, the windows, and the hardy plank. The house sustained major structural damage and serious foundation problems.

Drywall investigation expands into US products
In a report issued Monday, the Consumer Products Safety Commission said its studies found a "strong association" between the Chinese drywall and corrosion. The agency also said it found a possible link between health problems and high levels of hydrogen sulfide gas emitted from the wallboard, coupled with formaldehyde, which is commonly found in new houses. The commission also recently made public a separate 44-home investigation into homeowner complaints, listed on its Web site as a probe into "imported drywall." In fact, 10 of those homes had American drywall.

Protests planned at local homebuilder
A couple hundred people plan to demonstrate at Pulte Homes  Inc., based in Bloomfield Hills, to protest the homebuilder's lending and construction practices. Homeowners and workers will travel 3,300 miles, stopping in 10 cities across the United States to tell Pulte Homes to stop foreclosing on the American dream.

American Banking News: Obama's "Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009′ Provides Tax Breaks Worth Billions to Big Business
Nowhere has the bailout funds been seen as useless than the billions thrown around by the Obama administration in the name of creating more jobs. Now that it has been exposed as either a hoax, or at minimum – incompetence, the "Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009,' which was recently signed into law by Obama, offers up to $33 billion in tax breaks to big business under the guise of creating more jobs. In the meantime, unemployment continues to soar while companies use funds and tax breaks for business purpose and not hiring.

Sting Targets Unlicensed Contractors
When your house needs repairs, do you know who is coming into your home? Monday on the Nightbeat at 10, it's plumbing, lies and electrical tape...State investigators recently launched a sting operation in San Antonio to target unlicensed electrical and air conditioning contractors. Their goal was to keep homeowners safe. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation set up shop at a vacant house and called contractors and handymen for bids on electrical and air conditioning work. None of the contractors the agency targeted possessed state or city licenses, which makes it illegal for them to offer such services.