"There are six million homeowners who are under water," said Calhoun. But many of them did not finance their mortgages through Fannie or Freddie, and, critically, "many of them are making their payments on time," he said. Jim Parrott, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, said the economy has improved the lot of homeowners who have held on this long. "Because the economy has improved over the last several years the number of delinquent borrowers has fallen off dramatically," he said. Such a program — of which both Calhoun and Parrott were in favor — was highly contentious in 2010.
