Brown and Waters urge housing market stability during Covid-19 pandemic

Federal Issues House Financial Services Committee Senate Banking Committee Consumer Finance CARES Act Federal Reserve Department of Treasury Covid-19 Mortgages Mortgage Servicing

On April 15, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin urging the agencies to use the authority granted under Title IV of the CARES Act to meet the needs of the housing market and ensure the stability of nonbank mortgage servicers as homeowners and renters struggle to make timely mortgage and rent payments. Brown and Waters stress that the “government must be prepared to respond quickly to prevent a liquidity shortfall in the single-family and multifamily mortgage markets, and to ensure that consumers are equitably served by that response.” They caution that while Ginnie Mae has announced measures to meet its servicers’ liquidity needs (covered by InfoBytes here), these changes “may be insufficient to address all of the liquidity challenges.”