A home is more than just where families come at the end of the day—it is also where children are raised and memories are created. Homeownership is the primary way families of modest means build wealth, which can be passed on to the next generation. In recent years, most mortgages approved for lower wealth families and consumers of color were government-sponsored loans: FHA, VA, and USDA. Were it not for these programs, few consumers of color would know the pride—and realize the financial benefits—of homeownership. If America’s housing market is to truly recover, all credit-worthy borrowers...
Home ownership has been the primary means for most American families to build and pass on inter-generational wealth. However, government-sanctioned racial discrimination in housing and mortgage finance markets robbed many families of this opportunity, and today’s racial homeownership gap is barely changed from the levels of more than 50 years ago. Closing the homeownership gap is essential to closing the racial wealth gap. Additionally, predatory mortgage lending practices drained trillions in wealth from families, especially Black, Latino, low wealth and low-income Americans. CRL successfully advocated for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which has made the mortgage market far safer for consumers. CRL is building on this progress by working to ensure that all credit-worthy borrowers have access to fair, affordable, and sustainable mortgages. And that policy makers and market participants develop solutions that are appropriate to respond to the scale of this housing crisis.
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Download the full text of the comment. In determining the capital standards for the GSEs, it is first critical to remember the primary drivers of the 2008 financial crisis and how those conditions have changed, affecting both the likelihood and severity of a future crisis. Next, the assumptions and mechanics of setting the capital regime must be closely examined in order to both set aside sufficient capital and enable the GSEs to provide their essential support for the housing market. Since the cost of holding capital to protect against a future crisis comprises the bulk of the total g-fees...
Today, the Center for Responsible Lending, Americans for Financial Reform, and other leading national labor, civil rights, consumer advocacy, fair housing, and legal services organizations responded in a joint comment to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on how the agency should update Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) procedures. The groups pressed the OCC that any changes to the CRA must strengthen -- not weaken -- banks’ obligation to meet the needs of low-income communities and communities of color and that changes must result...
These comments are submitted on behalf of the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) to express our organization’s strong support for effective enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, and our concern about the approach proposed by the OCC in the above-referenced Federal Register notice, dated September 5, 2018, entitled “Reforming the Community Reinvestment Act Regulatory Framework.” The Community Reinvestment Act is a critical component of efforts to stop lending discrimination throughout the nation and the National Fair Housing Alliance...
Both the GSEs and Ginnie Mae continue to provide critical mortgage capital to underserved communities. The GSEs purchased more than two million homes and refinance mortgage loans in 2015, including almost half a million loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers, nearly 400,000 loans to borrowers of color and over 300,000 loans to borrowers living in rural areas. At the same time, smaller financial institutions (those with assets less than $10 billion) originated and sold loans to the GSEs in order to meet the credit needs of nearly 400,000 borrowers seeking mortgage credit in rural...
On this tenth anniversary of the financial crisis, there have been many retrospectives on the US government’s response to that catastrophe, with more to come. The commentary to date has largely focused on the extraordinary measures taken to prevent a much deeper collapse of the American and global economies. Measures were implemented to address the immediate crisis and reduce the likelihood of a repeat event. Both had a significant impact. But in examining the crisis and its responses, it is critical to remember that it was triggered and substantially driven by a dysfunctional housing market...
The undersigned organizations write to express our opposition to S. 2155, the so-called “Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act,” and urge you to oppose this harmful legislation. As you know, S. 2155 passed in the Senate on March 14th. The bill already contains destructive policies that roll back or eliminate essential protections put in place by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection (Dodd-Frank) Act after unchecked reckless lending nearly destroyed the US economy. Although this bill seeks to protect smaller lenders while maintaining access to...
Since 1934, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has played a vital role in the housing finance system. It serves as the entry point to the mortgage market for many first-time homebuyers and helped create a strong economic recovery following the Great Depression. However, in its early development, the FHA perpetuated racial discrimination in its facilitation of broad mortgage credit liquidity by favoring white borrowers and excluding African-Americans and other people of color. This discrimination is a key contributor to the differing rates of homeownership between whites and people of...
Mark Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League Michael F. Molesky, senior financial economist Mike Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) The proposed housing finance legislation would impose great harm on affordable housing efforts and the overall housing market. Proponents of the legislation do not address the damage the proposal would do by repealing the existing structural protections for equitable housing access for all areas of the country, all lenders, and all credit-worthy borrowers. In addition, their cost projections for the proposed system use...
S. 2155 would re-expose consumers to reckless and abusive financial practices, including many that contributed to the last recession and foreclosure crisis. The bill weakens crucial consumer protections, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Qualified Mortgage (QM) rule and Ability-to-Repay standard. The bill would also let Wall Street greed once again threaten to bring down the U.S. economy. Download the two-page factsheet.