When you think about who is going to be hit the hardest by pollution, whether it’s conventional air water and soil pollution or climate change, it is very often low-income communities and communities of color. The undercutting of these kinds of protections is going to have a disproportionate impact on these very same communities.
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Department of Housing and Urban Development
FHA leadership should increase the mortgage insurance premium (MIP) for all products above 20-year terms and maintain MIP for all products below 20-year terms and all refinances. FHA should encourage wealth-building homeownership opportunities, which can be accomplished best through shorter-duration mortgages.* Ideally, Congress would contemplate a fundamental revision of FHA’s statutory restriction of single-family housing mortgage insurance to first-time homebuyers.*° This would include (with support from HUD leadership):
1. Moving the Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM) program once again to its own special risk insurance fund.
2. Revising loan limit determinations.
3. Providing statutory flexibility for shorter-term products that amortize principal earlier and faster.
Statutorily restricting eligibility for first-time homebuyers and abandoning the affirmative obligation authorities erected for the single-family housing programs across federal agencies and government-sponsored enterprises.”
The HUD Secretary should move the HUD Real Estate Assessment Center (REAC) from PIH to the Office of Housing, which already implements property standards in its multifamily housing lending programs through the multifamily accelerated processing (MAP) lending guidelines. Giving HUD the authority to streamline the enforcement of compliance with housing standards across the federal government and flexibility for physical inspections through private accreditation should also be considered.
HUD should maintain its requested budget authority for modernization initiatives that are applicable to the Office of the Chief Information Officer and program offices across the department.
LONGER-TERM POLICY REFORM CONSIDERATIONS”
Congress has charged HUD principally with mandates for construction of the
nation’s affordable housing stock in addition to setting and enforcing standards for decent housing and fair housing enforcement. Regardless of intent, HUD’s efforts have yielded mixed results at best. Even today, more than a half-century after Congress put enforcement of so-called fair housing in the hands of the HUD bureaucracy, implementation of this policy is muddled by the repeated application of affirmative race-based policies. Also, the production mandate for HUD’s