Home foreclosures are up 19% since last October; that, combined with a sluggish housing market, has left many communities around the country studded with vacant homes. We're talking about what comes along with those empty houses: house parties, rodents and, for some, ongoing efforts to keep their neighborhood clean. We speak to Luther Bradley, block captain for the neighborhood watch group in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood in Detroit; John Tyus, member of the Downtown Brooklyn campaign for Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, and Karen Meinzen-McEnerny, councilwoman in Sandy Springs, Ga.

• Washington Takeout: Todd Zwillich looks at the latest fundraising filings for Senate candidates and what they portend.
  
• Sports Takeout: An exciting Monday Night Football game hinges on punt returns and pass blocking, as Ibrahim Abdul-Matin describes. 
• Listener Takeout: Listeners respond to our new series, "The Value," about what matters most in the changing economy. We also hear your takes on the bailout and a personal story of impending foreclosure.

This month, the U.S. Congressional Oversight Panel released a new report that looks at how effective goverment efforts have been at stemming the tide of foreclosures. It questions whether the U.S. Treasury's strategies will lead to permanent mortgage modifications for many homeowners, and expresses concern about the limited scope and scale of the Making Home Affordable program.

We talk with the chair of the panel, Elizabeth Warren, and Brian Murphy, who knows from first-hand experience the difficulties of modifying a home loan .

It's no secret that more low-income American families than ever before are facing foreclosure. But there's a new problem that is making it even tougher for those families to navigate housing court: a national shortage of free legal aid attorneys to represent them. Melanca Clark is an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice, which published a report yesterday called "Foreclosures: A Crisis in Legal Representation." The report discusses the challenges facing homeowners trying to navigate the lending system without legal representation. We also talk to Atlanta legal aid attorney Sarah Bolling about having to turn away clients.

The numbers are out: After four months of steadily increasing, home sales tapered off in August. We speak to Nicholas Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, for a look at the national housing scene. Then, we take a look at the market from the perspective of three local players: Behrooz Shahidi, a realtor in New Jersey; Ken Ebaugh, a senior mortgage banker with Paramount Bank near Detroit; and Eric Mattinson, who is a first-time home buyer from Greensboro, N.C.

Cities across the U.S. are facing devastating rates of foreclosure. As the numbers of vacant houses increase, another problem has cropped up: banks don't want to keep all those foreclosed properties. In Ohio, Cleveland's Cuyahoga County expects at least 13,000 new foreclosures this year, but state Treasurer Jim Rokakis has a plan – he wants to buy up bad mortgages and sell them back to homeowners in order to keep people in their homes. We ask Rokakis about his plan and speak to Dan Moulthroup, reporter with WCPN in Cleveland, and the host of Sound of Ideas.

The foreclosure crisis is not just about subprime mortgages anymore. Because of job losses and rising health care costs, homeowners who were once able to keep up with their payments are beginning to fall behind. Shannon Riggs, a homeowner from Norfolk, Virginia, who almost lost her home after her husband lost his job, tells The Takeaway her story. And Anya Kamenetz, Staff Writer for Fast Company magazine and author of “Generation Debt,” will look at what options homeowners have, and how the Obama administration can better address the problem.

Even for people who work in the real estate markets every day it is hard to tell what way the housing market is heading. New-home construction held steady at almost 11 percent in March, according to government data released yesterday. But foreclosures are up, with nearly 804,000 homes getting a notice in just the first three months of this year. That's a 24 percent increase compared to the same time last year. But other analysts are seeing hope and some first time homebuyers are finding themselves in great positions to buy.

To help us parse the numbers we turned to two experts: Behrooz Shahidi, a realtor in New Jersey, and Michael Corkery, housing reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

Congress has passed a measure that would allow bankruptcy judges to change the terms of mortgages to help strapped homeowners avoid foreclosure. Supporters say it will keep people in their homes while the banking industry says it will prompt lenders to raise rates across the board. University of Iowa Law Professor Katie Porter, a specialist on bankruptcy and mortgages, and her father Daniel Porter, vice president of Kerndt Brothers Savings Bank in Lansing, Iowa, join The Takeaway with an analysis.

The Obama administration has released the details of its housing plan, which is meant to be a finger in the dam for the tidal wave of homes facing foreclosure throughout the U.S. Yesterday the administration launched their website, that will help struggling homeowners determine their eligibility for assistance. We can do one better than that. Joining us is Takeaway contributor and financial adviser Alvin Hall who is here to help homeowner Pamela Zombeck in Salem, Massachusetts sort through it all.

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