This kind of relief should be extended by cities to all homeowners across America whose houses are underwater. The real estate bubble was aided and abetted by the banking industry which knew it was promoting an irresponsible gambling scheme during that time as it ignored its very own, time-tested-and-proven formulas for safe loan-to-income rations above which a borrower is at risk of being unable to make his/her payments.
In the interests of its own short-term financial gains, lending institutions across the country abandoned their fiduciary relationship to borrowers in order to unethically fatten their own wallets under the Republican Party's and George W. Bush administration's laughable "we trust businesses to do the right thing and so don't need any regulations to insure it happens."
That banksters knowingly perpetrated this massive fraud eliminates any reasonable or legitimate justification they might offer for why they should be allowed to continue reaping undeserved financial rewards from their industry's participation in this pervasive crime. (If our government wasn't so captured by the corporate world, we would have already seen many banking execs prosecuted and a serious disgorgement of profits illicitly gained by them and their employers, not to mention painful fines.) Cities should thus rigorously use their eminent domain powers to make actual flesh-and-blood citizens healthy in their home ownership wherever possible.
Since the inadequate and slow-to-implement federal government programs (e.g., Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP; Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP; Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives, or HAFA; and Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, or HASP) has allowed banks to continue gaming the system while perpetuating the misery of unwitting homeowners who make loan payments on homes now worth far less than during the bubble, let the power of the cities proactively help their citizens and local tax base.
Ideally, this progressive policy catches fire with citizens across America who will push their own local governments to join in.