WASHINGTON - U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan issued a statement today following the United States Senate's adoption of an amendment extending the Gulf Coast Opportunity Zone (GO Zone) Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) placed in service date by two years, to December 31, 2012. Donovan and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent a letter to U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu earlier this week, expressing the Administration's support of the amendment she sponsored and was adopted today.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development today announced that it is charging two Poughkeepsie, New York-area landlords with violating the Fair Housing Act for allegedly refusing to allow a Vietnam-era veteran suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to have a therapeutic service dog in his apartment. In addition, HUD's charge contends that the landlords, Gerald and Patrick Paribelli, who manage and own the Apartment Buildings of South Street Builders, Inc., in Highland, NY, retaliated against the veteran by threatening to evict him because he filed a housing discrimination complaint.

Mortgage rates have held fairly steady since the middle of last week.

A note, sent yesterday, from a reader named Matthew.

In August 2009, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage reported that its U.S.-based servicing staff stood at 11,500.

At the time, the company noted that it was staffing up to handle a backlog of pending loan modifications.

As of February, Well Fargo's servicing staff climbed to more than 14,500 employees, according to data reported by Moody's Investors Service.

A report announced by the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business indicated that the risk of mortgage defaults declined between the fourth-quarter 2009 and the first-quarter of this year.

It was the lowest point for the index since 2005.

The index reportedly measures the risk of default on newly originated mortgages by tracking local and national economic conditions.