An audacious vow by the Obama Administration to eliminate veteran homelessness in two years — an initiative that's shown progress but is off pace to fully succeed — got a shot in the arm Thursday when leaders of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs proposed legislation to help plug lingering holes in the existing veteran safety net. 

A central theme of the Homeless Veterans Prevention Act of 2013 is to allow the Department of Veterans Affairs to shift its transitional-housing system for street-bound ex-service members into a process that's more focused on giving veterans easier access to permanent, stable housing.

While transitional housing units can give quick shelter to veterans — and, indeed, lower the population of homeless veterans — many of those same men and women often cannot find affordable, long-term housing such as leased apartments. Some ultimately wind up sleeping again under bridges or in cars, say veterans advocates. 

To help end that cycle, the bill would "provide incentives" to the VA "to avoid disruptions that arise when veterans complete transitional housing programs and move on to permanent housing," according to a news release on the legislation. 

The proposed law is sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Richard Burr, R-N.C. — the chairman and ranking member of the Senate veterans’ panel. Staff members at that committee were unable to say Thursday if the bill would require extra funding, although most of the programs slated to be enhanced already are paid for through federal budgets. 

“We must continue to invest in the progress that has been made and remove any remaining barriers to housing for veterans,” Sanders said.

Since VA Secretary Eric Shinseki pledged in 2009 to pull every veteran off the streets by 2015, that aggressive push has slashed veteran homelessness by 17 percent. But the most recent head count conducted by federal authorities (in January 2012) found more than 62,000 veterans remain homeless, casting doubt as to whether the VA can meet its ambitious deadline.  

Other key pieces of the act include: 

• Keeping veteran families together by allowing the VA to house the children of homeless veterans in transitional housing environments. (Currently, families are often split up when veterans enter such facilities). 
• Allowing the VA to partner with public and private entities to bolster the availability of legal services for homeless veterans. 
• Requiring transitional housing providers to specifically meet needs of homeless women veterans.

In an emailed statement, VA spokesman Josh Taylor said the agency "appreciates" the renewed backing from Sanders and Burr. 

"While we have made significant progress, there is more work to do," Taylor said. "With the continued support of our partners in Congress, at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the hundreds of community organizations across the country, we will end homelessness among veterans and provide them with the benefits they have earned and deserve."

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The economic impact of the housing bust on homeowners who live near a foreclosed property comes to about $2 trillion, according to a new accounting by a consumer advocacy group.

In a report released Wednesday, the Center for Responsible Lending estimates that more than half of that “spillover loss” occurred in communities of color, which the study’s authors define as census tracts where more than 50 percent of the residents are Hispanic, African-American or otherwise non-white. Those losses, the authors note, reflect the high concentrations of foreclosures in those neighborhoods.

The study looked only at the indirect impact of foreclosures on properties within one-eighth of a mile of a home in foreclosure. The total loss of home equity since the housing market collapsed is more like $7 trillion, the consumer advocacy group said. That figure  doesn't include additional indirect costs.

“Communities with high concentrations of foreclosures lose tax revenue and incur the financial and  non-financial costs of abandoned properties and neighborhood blight, while homeowners living in close proximity to foreclosures suffer loss of wealth through depreciated home values,” the report’s authors wrote.

Related: New-home sales jump to two-year high

Households near a foreclosed property lost or will lose an average $21,077 in wealth or about 7.2 percent of their home value, the report found. In minority neighborhoods, the families lost an average of $37,084 or 13.1 percent of their home value.

To arrive at its estimate, the group combined statistics collected by the government, Mortgage Bankers Association and a private database maintained by Lender Processing Services, a company that provides services to mortgage lenders.

Related: Are you still having mortgage trouble with your bank?

The authors note that over time some of the losses inflicted by the spillover effect of foreclosures will be offset by rising home prices. The estimate covers foreclosures started between 2007 and 2011.

The pace of home new foreclosure filings has been falling this year, falling 7 percent in September compared with the previous month and down 16 percent from September 2011, according to RealtyTrac, a research firm. That was the lowest total since July 2007.

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Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters

World War II veteran Howard McGowan, 88, is facing a 50 percent rent hike on the one-bedroom apartment in Malden, Mass., he and his wife have shared for 25 years.

One night last spring, David Hall returned home to his studio apartment outside Boston to learn that his monthly rent had spiked from $725 to $995.

It would be much cheaper for the maintenance manager to buy a nearby starter house than to stay put. But his mortgage broker told him that while his credit score was good, it was not high enough to meet banks' tough standards, he said.

"I know if I walk into a bank, they are just going to laugh at me," Hall says. "So I'm stuck."

He is not alone.

Five years after the housing bubble burst, the United States is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. Home prices have fallen a third from their peaks, but many Americans cannot benefit because they cannot get a mortgage.

With credit tight, many consumers have no choice but to rent. Others who can afford to buy are also renting, because they view real estate as a lousy investment. With this increased demand, rents in some cities have jumped by double-digit percentage rates.

In the 12 months ended in May, rents rose 14 percent in San Francisco and 11 percent in San Jose, California, according to real estate data provider Zillow. Last year in Minneapolis, they spiked 11 percent even as home values sank 8 percent.

Apartment rent sticker shock gets worse 

People with lower incomes have long struggled to find affordable housing, but many in the middle class are now hurting, too.

Most personal finance experts recommend allocating no more of 30 percent of family income to housing, but nearly 40 percent of Americans are paying more than a third, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

In New York City, one-third of households are spending more than half their pay on rent.

"We have falling incomes, rising rents and nothing but substantial upward pressure on those rents," says Chris Herbert, director of Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. "And nothing in the cards suggests it will turn around anytime soon."

Today's housing market is a buyer's paradise.

It is now cheaper to buy a home than it is to rent in virtually every major city in the United States, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

But for many in the renter class, buying even a modest home is impossible because financing is so hard to secure.

Lending for home purchases hit a 12-year low of $404 billion last year, down from $1.4 trillion in 2006, according to trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance. That means mortgage credit is tighter than it was even before the housing boom.

This year, lending is expected to drop even more, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

A recent Morgan Stanley research report states that the average credit score is 762 for a consumer securing a mortgage backed by government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae . But 65 percent of Americans have scores below 750.

In other words, a disproportionate number of mortgages are going to people with unusually good credit. A perfect score is 850, and anything below 660 is considered subprime.

"Basically, access to credit for borrowers with less than spotless credit is severely limited," the Morgan Stanley report states. "A good chunk" of U.S. households are "cut off from mortgage credit on this count alone."

For people who can get mortgages, rates are at their lowest levels in several generations. Add that to the cheap home prices, and houses are at their most affordable since at least 1970, when the National Association of Realtors began tracking this metric.

Normally, high affordability translates into higher sales. And the housing market is showing some signs of recovery -- the S&P/Case Shiller index of home prices had its third consecutive monthly gain in April. Last week, the NAR said pending home sales had matched a two-year high in May.

But any recovery has been tepid. The NAR said existing home sales had declined 1.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.55 million in May from 4.62 million in April. That is 34.2 percent above the July 2010 bottom of 3.39 million, but far short of the 5.5 million pace that the NAR considers healthy.

"Home sales have just barely picked up from their cyclical lows, and that's because there are still constraints to borrowing," said Moody's Analytics economist Celia Chen.

Part of the lender pullback has to do with the stringent regulations Washington put in place after the housing crash, says Michael Fratantoni, vice president of the Mortgage Bankers Association. These rules put more of the losses from bad mortgages onto lenders, instead of investors or government-sponsored enterprises.

Then there is the climate of unstable home prices and a shaky labor market: "There's a risk that even a borrower with moderately good credit may fall behind," Fratantoni says.

Consumers who cannot buy must rent, and that is where many Americans are feeling the pressure. A rent index from Zillow shows year-over-year gains for 70 percent of the U.S. metropolitan areas, while its home value index rose in only 7.3 percent.

Only a few years ago, landlords in cities like San Francisco and New York were tossing in a month or two of free rent, sometimes with parking, to lure tenants into signing leases.

Today, applicants are showing up at apartment viewings with copies of their unblemished credit reports and letters of recommendation from bosses and prominent friends, in the hopes of snatching up a place to rent.

Equity Residential, one of the biggest apartment owners in the United States, has more renters with high credit scores than ever, Vice President of Operations David Santee said on an April conference call with analysts.

Demand for apartments is also higher because many potential buyers in their 20s and 30s want to stay flexible - home ownership is not as attractive as it was to earlier generations.

Still, plenty of people would prefer entry into the ownership class.

Last spring Rosemary Wynder, a physician order specialist, found her rent shooting up. She decided to buy a house.

But a bank glitch in February had caused one late car loan payment, dinging her credit score. The Utica, New York, resident has been unable to straighten out the mistake, and five banks have rejected her for a mortgage.

"I've been crying," says Wynder. "I've been praying." 

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Courtesy of Allison Cramer

Jacy Painter Kelly and her son, Painter, 5, cement handprints at their new home near Charlotte, N.C.

While lugging 40 new cabinets into their nearly built home Wednesday, the Kelly family will gleefully stack another layer of chaos onto the saw-and-sales frenzy buzzing through their suburban Charlotte subdivision.

“It is a crazy-bizarre scene," said Jacy Painter Kelly, who will move into her new, four-bedroom house in Baxter Village in August along with her two young kids and husband. "Sales are insane. And the Goodyear store across the street gets a lot of business from all the nails in (residents’) tires.” 

The bustle at Baxter Village is part of a quickening home-construction pulse across the nation: New-home sales edged up 3.3 percent from March to April to a seasonally adjusted 343,000-unit annual pace after a 332,000-unit rate in March, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.

That is a far cry from the 1.3 million sold at the height of the housing boom in 2005, but still represents the latest sign the battered housing market has regained a semblance of normality.

The median price of a new home sold hit $235,700 last month, up 4.9 percent from April 2011, according to Commerce statistics. A separate report Wednesday from the Federal Housing Finance Agency showed home prices also gained 1.8 percent in March after pushing 0.3 percent higher in February.

When blended with Tuesday’s report from the National Association of Realtors that existing-home sales touched a two-year high in April, analysts say evidence of a modest real estate revival seems to be mounting. 

Courtesy of Kevin Kelly

Painter Kelly, 5, vacuums construction dust at his family's new home near Charlotte, N.C.

“Things are looking good,” said Pat Newport, an economist with IHS Global Insight. “These are still very low numbers by historical standards. But when combined with the NAR report, this tells us that something is going on. Prices are stabilizing after adjusting for inflation.

“It’s hard to get a good picture of the housing market early in the year because (warming) weather can distort the numbers. But I think the picture emerging is a good one. The housing market is getting better,” Newport added. “We had a very good first quarter, and the numbers are telling us it was more than just good weather helping the market.”

Amid Wednesday’s fresh data dump, Newport called the FHFA release “the really good news” because “it showed prices are increasing pretty much across the board, in all nine census divisions.”

Newly built homes represent less than 20 percent of the U.S. housing market, but they place a far larger footprint on the overall economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs per year and produces about $90,000 in tax revenue, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

The 3.3 percent rise in new home sales “is line with our expectations for a continued, modest increase in home sales as buyers gain confidence in the economy and their jobs,” said David Crowe, chief economist with the NAHB.

For the Kelly family, building made more budget sense than purchasing an existing home. They needed extra cash on hand and an opportunity to create a unique space to accommodate Jacy Painter Kelley’s in-home, kitchen-goods business, lucylucybangbang. She makes hanging dishtowels. From her work station, she needs to be able to keep track of her two children, ages 5 and 2.

“We looked at existing homes. They just weren’t what we wanted. With my business growing quickly, I need a place in the home where I’m really central to everything,” Kelly said.

“When you buy a previously owned house, you have to put a lot of cash down. You don’t have a lot left to make your home exactly what we needed. By building, you still have to put cash down but you can design just what you want it to be,” she added. “I don’t want to be tucked away by myself and I don’t want to be working in the dining room.” 

Fred Prouser / Reuters

An existing single family home which is up for sale is pictured in Burbank, Calif., Dec. 15, 2011.

Real estate agents are famous for putting a listing in the best possible light to close a sale. On Thursday, the industry's national trade association confirmed that its monthly data have been painting a rosier picture of the pace of home sales since 2007.

As msnbc.com reported in March, the National Association of Realtors has been overstating the pace of existing home sales by more than 16 percent. The trade group now says just 17.7 million existing homes were sold from 2007 to 2010, not the 20.6 million it originally reported. The NAR made no changes to its data on home prices.

In its announcement of the downward revisions, the trade group sought to downplay the impact of "re-benchmarking" the data lower.

“From a consumer’s perspective, only the local market information matters and there are no changes to local multiple listing service data or local supply-and-demand balance, or to local home prices,” NAR economist Lawrence Yun said in a release explaining the revisions.

The NAR's monthly sales data is a critical input for a host of widely-watched forecasts generated by public and private economists - from Wall Street to the Federal Reserve. Investors make big bets based on the data. Debates on government policy, from the White House to Capitol Hill, rely on this barometer of the health of the housing industry, a critical pillar of the U.S economy.

Barclays Capital

The revision shows that home sales were substantially lower than originally reported over the past three years.

But beginning about a year ago, the data reported by the NAR began diverging from the assessment of independent researchers. That began a lengthy reassessment of its data collection methods and analysis as the trade group met with government and private housing experts, including the Federal Reserve, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders, government-owned mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and CoreLogic, a California-based data firm that first raised doubts about the association's data.

It would not be the first time the NAR's economics team has overstated the health of the housing market. Following the housing market peak in late 2005, the trade group's forecasts remained upbeat well into 2007.

Thursday's downward data revisions confirm that the housing market has fallen further than originally thought. But the new numbers don't change the outlook for the market's recovery. That's because the revisions also lowered the NAR's estimate of the number of houses for sale by 18 percent, to 2.6 million from 3.1 million.

"The balance between supply and demand is the same," said Paul Dales, a senior economist at Capital Economics. "The revisions therefore hold no implications for either the previous, or future, path of prices."

The median price for an existing home fell 3.5 percent in November from a year earlier to $164,200, according to the NAR.

On Thursday, the trade group cited a number of factors that combined to skew the data upward. Since the housing market collapsed in 2007, fewer homeowners have opted to sell their house without a real estate agent. At the same time, more homebuilders have begun using the multiple listing services to find customers. Those shifts tended to inflate the number of sales captured by those MLS systems, which form the basis for the NAR's data collection.

The expansion of MLS services since 2007 has already created some regional overlap, with more than one MLS system listing the same property in some cases. That overlap lead to some double counting of sales, the NAR said.

The group also cited changes in the way the Census Bureau collects data, population shifts and noted that some sales were counted twice as homes were "flipped" shortly after they were purchased.

The "re-benchmarked" data show the pace of home sales was substantially slower from 2007 through 2010 than originally reported. The figure for 2007 was lowered 11 percent to 5.04 million; 2008 was lowered 16 percent to 4.11 million; 2009 dropped 16 percent to 4.34 million; and 2010 fell by 15 percent to 4.19 million.

The latest monthly data from the group show that existing home sales rose 4 percent in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.42 million.

The NAR report follows news Tuesday that home builders are seeing a gradual recovery new housing starts and permits. Last month, builders broke ground on an annual rate of 685,000 homes, according to the Commerce Dept. That was a 9.3 percent jump from October and the fastest pace since April 2010.

WASHINGTON -- A growing number of families in the United States are struggling to put food on the table as poverty rises in major cities, a new survey showed on Thursday.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors' 2011 hunger and homelessness survey found all but four of the 29 cities surveyed reported an increase in requests for emergency food assistance during the period between September 2010 and August 2011.

Half of those asking for emergency food assistance were people in families, while 26 percent were employed. The elderly accounted for 19 percent, with the homeless making up the remaining 11 percent.

This is the latest survey to underscore the magnitude of the damage inflicted by the 2007-09 recession.

Though the downturn ended 2-1/2 years ago, the recovery has been very slow by historical standards as households struggle to repair their balance sheets and unemployment is at an uncomfortably high 8.6 percent.

About 24.4 million Americans are either out of work or underemployed and employment remains 6.3 million jobs below its level in December 2007 when the recession started.

According to government data, a record 49.1 million Americans were living in poverty in 2010.

During that period, the number of households depending on food stamps - subsidies that help people cover the costs of groceries - soared 16 percent to 13.6 million.

The mayors' survey attributed unemployment, poverty, low wages and high housing costs as the main reasons behind the surge in demand for food assistance.

It found there was a 10 percent average increase in the amount of food being distributed by the cities and just over two-thirds of the cities reported a rise in the quantities they were handing out.

About 71 percent of cities said their total budget for emergency food purchases had gone up. Across the 29 cities, 27 percent of the people requiring emergency food assistance did not receive it, the survey found.

In 86 percent of the cities, food pantries and emergency kitchens had to reduce the quantities of food people could receive per visit or the amount of food offered per meal.

None of the cities expected demand for food assistance to decline over the next year. Many anticipated a drop in the resources to provide food assistance, citing cuts in government funding and declining food donations by the public.

The survey also found that homelessness increased by an average of six percent across the 29 cities.

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NEW ORLEANS --  A federal judge is allowing Occupy protesters and homeless people to return to the New Orleans park where they had been camped since early October.

U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey's order Tuesday allows the group, Occupy NOLA, to return for at least seven days.

About 150 officers marched into the encampment across from City Hall before dawn Tuesday. They forced about 150 occupants out and removing tents in a peaceful eviction that sometimes drew loud complaints but did not result in violence.

Their lawyer Bill Quigley said the move was a surprise and that city officials had said they would not evict the occupants until after Tuesday's court hearing.

"You people are treasonous!" one protester shouted as the uniformed officers moved through the makeshift camp grounds at Duncan Plaza, a city block of green space that has been home to the loosely knit Occupy New Orleans movement since Oct. 6.

City officials had accommodated the protesters for weeks, allowing the tents — some nothing more than tarps or sheets of plastic thrown over ropes strung between trees — to stand unmolested and even providing portable toilets. But New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu had warned Friday that it was time for the around-the-clock encampment to end. Police had been distributing flyers warning that the park could no longer be used as a camp ground and, on Tuesday around 4 a.m., began ringing the park with barricades in preparation for the eviction.

"This was a display of a very well organized, well thought out, and now well executed effort," Landrieu said at a Tuesday morning news conference.

Landrieu said police and representatives of the city had gone through the camp several times a day since Friday telling people they must leave and handing out flyers telling them to leave.

There was no immediate reaction Tuesday evening from protesters on the ruling.

Elsewhere across the country Tuesday:

• Dem seeks probe of police at NYC Occupy protests
• 5 Occupy protesters cited in Tennessee
• Occupy protesters at home of Ore. couple facing eviction
• Occupy protesters in Cincinnati court Tuesday
• Marching to foreclosed home, accompanied by cops
• Demonstrators from 46 states 'Take back the Capitol'
• City may issue Occupy Albany permit
• BofA workers told to be careful amid Occupy protests
• Occupy Hartford protesters told to vacate
• Police clear out New Orleans camp
• Housing and Occupy activists take aim at foreclosed homes, empty lots 

For more on Tuesday's Occupy action, click here.

 NEW YORK -- A congressman is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate allegations of police misconduct in connection with the treatment of Occupy Wall Street protesters and journalists covering the demonstrations in New York City.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler says in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder there were "troubling reports" of possible misconduct by police.

He says there were reports of "possible unlawful surveillance" of protesters' constitutionally protected activities and excessive use of force by New York Police Department officers. He says he was "especially troubled" the NYPD "aggressively blocked journalists" from reporting the Nov. 15 eviction of protesters from a Manhattan park they were occupying.

The Department of Justice said Tuesday it will review the congressman's letter.

Police haven't responded to a request for comment.

Elsewhere across the country Tuesday:

• 5 Occupy protesters cited in Tennessee
• Occupy protesters at home of Ore. couple facing eviction
• Occupy protesters in Cincinnati court Tuesday
• Marching to foreclosed home, accompanied by cops
• Demonstrators from 46 states 'Take back the Capitol'
• City may issue Occupy Albany permit
• BofA workers told to be careful amid Occupy protests
• Occupy Hartford protesters told to vacate
• Police clear out New Orleans camp
• Housing and Occupy activists take aim at foreclosed homes, empty lots 

For more on Tuesday's Occupy action, click here.