New York Clergy Speak Out for GSEs ... Maloni, 10-2-2016
Church leaders pushed back this week on those who would violate the GSEs?
Thirty eight minority church leaders, who support the continued operation of Fannie and Freddie, wrote to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), a member of the SBC, both making the GSE case and nailing the large commercial banks for ignoring their neighborhoods, trying to destabilize or destroy the GSEs, seeking just to acquire F&F’s annual revenues.
Schumer (D-NY) is set to be the Senate Majority Leader if the Democrats win 51 seats or will be the Minority Leader if they don’t. The letter was copied to all the New York delegation serving on the House Banking Committee and FHFA Director Mel Watt, as well as others.
In establishing the importance of full GSE service to low and moderate income families, especially minorities, and the corresponding lack of big bank interest in serving those communities, the clergymen wrote:
Since their inception, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have acted to ensure that banks and other lenders would be able to extend mortgage credit in good times and in bad times. Their important service to our economy, from 1938 to the present, has helped lift millions of families out of economic bondage and, by supporting homeownership, provided those families with a chance to join the middle-class, increase their self-sufficiency, and improve the social and educational outcomes of their children and communities. However, as our communities of color seek to pursue those same goals today, Washington is inexplicably curtailing and threatening to eliminate the business functions performed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Conversely, the biggest banks have consistently displayed a disinterest in lending to us, and the likely effects of their feverish support for “GSE reform” should be as transparent to you as it is to us: more gentrification in our neighborhoods, more rental properties across our communities, less homeownership opportunities for our parishioners. The efforts of these big banks to mint another dollar by controlling the housing finance market will result in an increase of systemic risk, come at the expense of homeownership, reinforce the economic disparities plaguing our communities, and shut the door on our economic self-sufficiency.
Yay, Clergymen.
Their entire excellent letter can be found on GSE Links, thanks to site host “Whiteghost.”
Let’s see how the anti-GSE crowd handles this latest positive campaign, since, already, they are on the defensive owing to the majority of their GSE systemic alternatives will just make the big banks even stronger and groups like the Community Mortgage Lenders of America highlighting those uncomfortable facts.
Maybe this church leader communication could be a trend where housing-enlightened clergymen in other communities—large and small--get together and send similar letters to Congress, especially since certain Washington policy makers have trouble connecting the big bank opposition and GSE dots.
Maloni, 10-2-2016
AI
