Penalties pile up for poor Mainers facing stalled USDA foreclosures

Penalties pile up for poor Mainers facing stalled USDA foreclosures

​Mainers who bought homes under a poorly supervised federal program have fallen even further into crushing debt because federal officials have let their foreclosure cases languish. Nearly a year after the U.S. Department of Agriculture filed more than 50 foreclosure cases against Mainers who failed to repay loans through a low-income homeownership program, only 11 have been closed. A third are still pending simply because a USDA official has yet…