So much for the greater York County area being immune to a general decline in housing prices linked to the national mortgage financing crisis.

While it may have taken a while for the trickle down in price decreases to reach us, it's certainly here -- a reported 24 percent drop in homes sold for the first quarter of 2008 and a drop in the average sale price of $5,600 per home.

Executive officer Steve Snell of the Realtors Association of York and Adams Counties says the slowdown is more moderate here than elsewhere, but it is here.

In the nation's capital, meanwhile, Democrats in the House, despite the threat of a presidential veto, continue to push an omnibus housing package designed to essentially bring balance back to the economy and the housing market.

While this area has been spared the wave of foreclosures sparking horror stories in larger U.S. cities, distressed borrowers are everywhere in this mortgage crisis and economic downturn.

Key to the Democrat-sponsored plan is $15 billion for local and state governments to rehabilitate foreclosed properties and loan guarantees of $300 billion to put borrowers at extreme risk into Federal Housing Administration mortgages.

The president's balking at the plan is more than a bit puzzling, claiming it would only reward speculators and lenders. There is little doubt that would occur. But again, myopia seems to be endemic at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The package clearly would be a shot in the arm for the

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real estate industry while helping thousands of Americans facing difficult economic times keep their homes.

The statistics in the short term are not improving. Moody's Economy.com says one-quarter of all home sales in the nation are now foreclosure sales.

That's a frightening figure with small hope of short-term recovery of the country's real estate market. An example: in 20 key markets the decline in home prices from February 2007 to February 2008 is the steepest in two decades.

With the nation's homeowners hurting so, and the mortgage crisis threat to the economy not going away soon, it's time Congress earned its pay, and time for the president to give the plan a chance.