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Housing counseling groups convene in Washington DC

RCAC’s Housing Counseling Manager, Judy Hunter and other housing counseling groups traveled to Washington DC to meet with the administration and key members of the senate to discuss the role of housing counseling agencies in the ongoing housing crisis. Events included a lunch with Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director, Rich Cordray and Deputy Director Zixta Martinez; a Housing Counseling Leadership Meeting and an American Economic Competiveness Forum on Housing. Speakers included White House staff; Homeownership Preservation Office Chief, Darius Kingsley and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary, Shaun Donavan.

The housing counseling group pushed Donavan to use bank settlement funds to help pay for assisting homeowners with the home assistance modification program (HAMP) and other mortgage modification programs. The group also met with key staff from the U.S. Treasury, HUD and the White House to discuss the ongoing need for housing counseling funds and three year grant cycles. A key advocacy discussion was how the office of housing counseling would be established within HUD as mandated by the Dodd-Frank act and incentivizing housing counseling in conjunction with FHA loans. In a meeting with Darius Kingsley there was a discussion about using Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds to pay for counseling - the HUD intermediaries participating learned that the Treasury is currently negotiating with NeighborWorks for such a program and the agencies made it clear that it should be expanded beyond NeighborWorks.

The housing counseling group then met with members of the house and senate and further emphasized the need for using TARP funds for housing counseling.