The primary cause of foreclosures these days is unemployment rather than risky mortgages, according to a front page particle in yesterday's edition of The New York Times by Andrew Martin.

As a result, the article said, "there is a mismatch between the homeowners program's design and the country's economic realities - and a new round of finger-pointing about how best to fix it."

The Obama administration's housing effort does include programs to help unemployed homeowners, but they have been plagued by delays, dubious benefits, and abysmal participation, the article continued. "For example," it said, "a Treasury Department effort started in early 2010 allows the jobless to postpone mortgage payments for three months, but the average length of unemployment is now nine months and as of March31, there were only 7,397 participants," the article added.

"Data released last week suggests that the administration's task is only growing more difficult as the problems created by unemployment and housing persist. New job grwoth in May was anemic, and unemployment inched up to 9.1 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday. Earlier in the week, a widely watched index found that housing prices had dropped to their lowest level in nearly a decade. And while the rate of homes falling onto foreclosure has slowed, the reason is delays in processing foreclosures, hot a housing recovery, according to RealtyTrac, a company that tracks foreclosures. There were 219,258 foreclosure filings in April, the latest moth available.," the article. said.

"As part of the bank bailout, the Treasury Department was given $46 billion to spend on keeping homeowners in their houses' to date, the agency has spent about $1.85 million. Morris A. Davis, a former Federal Reserve economist, estimates that as many as a million homeowners slipped into foreclosure because of insufficient help for the unemployed. The money was there and they didn't spend it,' said Mr. Dais, an associate real estate professor at the University of Wisconsin. 'I don't man to sound outraged, but I am pretty outraged.'

Administration officials say that programs to curb foreclosure are voluntary so they are limited in how far they can push mortgage servicers and investors who often make more form foreclosures than from offering aid.

"Republican lawmakers have made clear that would like to get rid of anti-foreclosure programs altogether, and would block any new programs. Instead, it is setting homeowners advocates against administration officials over how to spend money already appropriated," the article said.