Kinda. Basically the city of Houston wants to take public money and give it to private individuals to help them pay off loans and improve their credit scores to help them get approved for a mortgage loan. Judging from the comments, the public is not reacting positively to this.

Credit scores do actually mean something and they are used for a reason. They’re a reflection of your financial trustworthiness and giving people tax payer money to improve their score isn’t going to magically make them actually responsible and trustworthy. Government can’t just treat loan standards and credit scores like some game where they’ve found the cheat code, it creates problems, just ask Freddie and Fannie Mae and their subprime loans.

Edit: Mayor Bill White has removed the city council’s agenda.

Council members are now professing their “embarrassment” about the proposal, which has hit the national news circuit, including drudgereport.com.

“This issue has hit a nerve across this country,” said Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck. “Not just here in the city of Houston. Giving people the ability to increase their credit score artificially because we’re allowing them to pay off their credit cards is exactly what got us into this (national economic) crisis in the first place.”

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