Washington,. D.C. --- Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Cal/35) (right), is incoming chairwoman of the Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee of the powerful House Financial Services Committee.
She plans to make affordable housing a key Democratic issue this year.
Yesterday Damian Paletta of Marketwatch (via Dow Jones Newswire) reported on Waters's speech to an influential housing finance group, where she warned bankers and HUD officials:
"For those of you who are worried about people like Maxine Waters in the financial services industry, stay worried..."
Waters warned bankers and HUD officials to be ready to discuss problems and solutions during hearings that start as soon as next week - in New Orleans.
"Come up with some answers. Come up with some ideas. Come up with some things that we can do that would help us work together to get the job done."
Waters spoke to Women in Housing and Finance, which includes a complex network of commercial and institutional bankers, investors and bureaucrats who finance much of what constitutes public housing in the U.S. today, as well as myriad programs designed to encourage (and subsidize) affordable housing development.
Marketwatch reports she plans to crack down on expensive mortgage products and wants lenders and bank regulators to develop ways to ensure that credit is available to low-income borrowers.
Waters said her main targets are:
"...products that are absolutely impossible to maintain by people who simply didn't know what they were getting into."
Waters also said she wanted to analyze costs and fees associated with the mortgage closing process.
The U.S. housing industry is a fertile field for Democrats to explore. For the past decade, housing programs have been administered by Republican appointees. No doubt many of them are dedicated, public-minded administrators, but our experience at the Florida Workforce Housing Network is starting to unravel some interesting clues.
The high-minded professionals who (a) lobby for appropriations, (b) lend huge quantities of government-backed development capital, (c) borrow it to develop projects, (d) monitor compliance and (e) administer the financing are often the same individuals.
That doesn't necessarily indicate corrpution, but it sure sets the stage for it.
Housing "issues" in Fla. include plenty of examples of Republican governance gone wild. In St. Petersburg, city officials are selling the city's largest public housing facility to a greedy scumbag developer who is already evicting the residents - including elderly disabled people - so he can build condos for sale at market rates. (See also Part II)
In Orlando, city officials spent more than $1.1 million to acquire a "blighted" city block and then sold it to a private developer for $253,812. That well-connected developer plans to build 10 workforce homes and:
a mix of 11 houses, 19 town houses, eight residential condominiums and five offices. Prices for the homes will range from $213,750 to $350,450.
In Tallahassee, city officials pillaged a $1.2 million fund earmarked for its poorest residents to use as "matching" funds for a state grant to help a developer build a 36-acre high-profile mixed-use project (shops, cafés, offices, etc.) in the heart of Tallahassee, the state capital.
None of those embarrassments compare with Miami's where half a dozen housing officials are already indicted and more arrests are anticipated. One of them spent almost $250,000 to buy a sculpture (above right) from an old high school friend to decorate a housing project that was never built. It still sits in a warehouse.
Waters' subcommittee will have plenty to keep itself busy.
(Note: this is cross-posted at Florida Workforce Housing Network, of which I am a principal, and Fla Politics, of which I am a supporter.)