The United States is in "as grave a period of national concern that we have had since the combination of the Great Depression and World War II," Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., said in Richmond yesterday.

Economic inequality, the affordable housing crisis and the Iraq war are indicators "that we are moving into a period of even greater concern," Webb said at a meeting with representatives of low-cost housing programs.

The 14 representatives of organizations including Housing Opportunities Made Equal, the Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity, the Urban League, Virginia Supportive Housing and the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy spoke of scam artists fooling people out of their homes, foreclosures, predatory lenders, and government restrictions that limit home building.

Webb is co-sponsor of a bill, the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, that provides credit counseling, increases refinancing opportunities and provides development grants to local governments.

The Senate passed the bill Thursday; the House of Representatives has gotten behind a different bill.

The Senate bill has been criticized for offering more relief to homebuilders than homeowners, and Webb acknowledged that he thinks it doesn't go far enough.

"This is not something you can solve with one piece of legislation or another," he said. "At least we're moving forward in a couple of areas."

The $100 million in extra funding it provides for pre-foreclosure counseling should help hard-pressed homeowners who can't pay their mortgages, Webb said.

While Virginia's foreclosure rate is less than the national average, the senator estimated Virginia will see nearly $2.21 billion in mortgage-related foreclosures in the next year and a half.

As a senator since 2006, Webb has made a name as one of the Senate's foremost critics of the war in Iraq, but he also has presented himself as an economic populist.

"Economic inequality is affecting how we live with such a broad range of issues in this country that we are breaking apart along class lines in a way that I don't think we've ever seen before," Webb declared.

The compensation of corporate chief executives in America is the highest in the world, Webb added.

On another subject, Webb said the report to Congress this week by Army Gen. David Petraeus, in which he recommended that the U.S. stop withdrawing troops from Iraq, "is not different from anything we talked about last summer. He talked about Iraq as if it were an island in the middle of the ocean, when the national strategic issues are regional and in some cases global."

Contact Tyler Whitley at (804) 649-6780 or twhitley@timesdispatch.com.