Maxine Waters discusses housing reform

On Tuesday, the Bipartisan Policy Center Housing Commission hosted a forum entitled Housing America’s Future — “New Directions for National Policy” which discussed details of a report about the housing crisis in America released by the commission earlier this year.

The all-day event featured a series of speeches and panels on topics including demographic trends in housing markets, housing finance reform, links between housing and healthcare and the role of energy efficacy in housing. Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services, delivered the keynote address and provided a preview of her hope for legislation and efforts currently underway in congress.

“Best case scenario, the Senate moves first [to pass a bill] but I don’t think it will happen this year,” Waters said in the discussion following her address. “I think it’s a little too complicated and there’s too much work still to be done on it but I do believe that we will have housing reform.”

Former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Henry G. Cisneros, who serves as co-chair of the Housing Commission that authored the report, said that it was important to bring Forums such as this one to the West Coast to stress the importance of policy on a local level and complement work being done in Washington.

“The report was somewhat East Coast centric,” Cisneros said. “But USC is such an opinion leader. If you want the intellectual capital of the West, it’s here. There’s an aggregation of talent.”

Furthermore, Cisneros said housing is at the core the social issues debate and college students, as future renters or buyers, play a key role in shaping that debate.

“Every other social objective depends on answering a fundamental question, where a family will sleep tonight.” Cisneros said.

The forum was the first of its kind held by the Bipartisan Policy Center on a college campus.

“Our goal is to examine federal housing policy what went wrong and where we need to go with reform. What we hope to do, and we think we have achieved to some extent already, is to be the catalyst to united the public policy debate,” said Pam Patenaude, director of Housing Policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center.  “The future of housing is dependent on[ the young] generation certainly [coming to] college campuses makes sense so we can get students involved.”

Discussions aim to address past errors made in the housing market and emphasize the importance of educating younger generations and the importance of developing financial literacy.

“We assumed the borrower understood what we understood and we can start with a better job of explaining what exists,” said Christopher George of CGM Financial, which provides housing loans. “We’re moving out of a stage where we’re placing blame and starting to think about where we’re headed.”

One other point of discussion was shifting demographics and the influence of minorities on the housing market. According to Enrique Lopezlira of the National Council of La Reza, a Hispanic rights and advocacy organization, a disproportionate number of minorities including African-Americans and Hispanics were turned down for loans in 2012.

Melany De La Cruz-Viesca, assistant director of UCLA’s Asian American studies center, said a majority of Asian American assets were decimated as a result of the foreclosure crisis. The solution to the problem, however, is not simple.

“My major takeaway is that when it comes down to trying to get private industries, public govern entities and potential consumers — it’s complex. There’s no easy solution and that’s a good thing. There shouldn’t be a one size fits all policy or product that addresses the problem.”

Regardless of what form the solution eventually takes, Cisneros said it is essential that the housing debate be addressed.

“It’s important to not allow it to be divided by partisan politics,” he said. “This is one of those situations where failure is not an option.”

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