[T]he Kansas City area has been steadily losing housing counselors for two years. They’re disappearing even as their workload has shifted from a traditional role helping people become homeowners to helping them stay homeowners. [...] Federal funds aimed at pulling struggling homeowners out of the foreclosure crisis have dried up, a victim of Washington’s budget battles. Nonprofit agencies around the nation are closing offices, laying off counselors and referring desperate homeowners elsewhere. Cutbacks are hitting even as the pace of foreclosure activity has begun to grow again after paperwork and processing problems had slowed lenders down over the past year. Counseling groups nationwide are pressing Congress to restore funds in the next budget, but their expectations are lower than their hopes.

Efforts by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats to help the millions of Americans in danger of being foreclosed on have been anemic, at best, and oftentimes even counterproductive. But what the Republicans have forced is by far much worse. They've been actively pursuing Mitt Romney's infamous idea of letting foreclosures "hit bottom." Via Think Progress , the Kansas City Star reports on the Republicans’ refusal to fund housing counseling and the drying up of that assistance

Think Progress's Pat Garofalo points out that the steadfast Republican opposition to this funding persists despite the fact that "a study by the Urban Institute finding that homeowners who use foreclosure counseling avoid foreclosure 'more frequently and avoided a return to default more often than their unaided counterparts.'"

Avoiding foreclosures obviously isn't a part of the Republican agenda, despite the fact that it'd not only help homeowners, but the larger economy. They don't care.