Elijah Cummings, the Homeowner Crusader

For President Barack Obama, fixing the collapsed housing market may be a part of political calculus, a key factor in winning a second term. For Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the fight to keep people in their homes and out of foreclosure is a personal mission.

“I feel it just sitting here and talking to you — it’s emotion,” Cummings told POLITICO in an interview last week. “When I walk out of my door every morning, five of 15 homes on the other side of the street are in foreclosure. … I see the devastation it brings on people every day.”

And it’s pain he knows first-hand. In 1997, just after Baltimore voters swept him into Congress, Cummings fell six months behind on his mortgage payments. Unless he came up with nearly $6,000 — and fast — the bank would take his home and kick him to the street.

Cummings made his payments and kept his home, and 14 years later, he was reluctant to talk with POLITICO about his brush with foreclosure. Yet, it’s clear the experience fuels his drive as ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to prevent others from experiencing the same fate, or worse — even if it means criticizing Obama, who, Cummings says, hasn’t attacked the problem with a sense of urgency.

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