Housing Rights VICTORY: How we won after demanding better from Sec. Julián Castro

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday July 06, 2016 · 11:09 AM PDT

2016/07/06 · 11:09

Recently, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro announced that he will make significant changes to improve a program that has been selling tens of thousands of mortgages to Wall Street, often at deep discounts. This is thanks to the fierce and courageous advocacy of a coalition of activists — including thousands of Presente.org members — who shined a spotlight on Secretary Castro and demanded better.

Presente.org, the organization I lead, is the largest Latinx online civil rights organization in the country. Our mission is to build Latinx power to ensure that our voices are heard and our rights upheld. That's why when we saw that HUD was selling mortgages to profit big banks, harming communities and exacerbating foreclosures, displacement, and gentrification, we knew we had to demand better.

Our call for action went straight to the top: Secretary Castro. We knew he could and should right this wrong and do right by our communities. This is the nature of political advocacy. We were clear — both publicly and in a private meeting with Secretary Castro — that we would continue escalating our campaign until HUD improved its policies and practices. His announcement last week shows that our voices were heard and that strong, unwavering organizing works. We achieved an important policy victory that will make a real difference for our communities – and in the process, Sec. Castro showed himself to be a stronger leader who will listen, and respond.

The politics of courage — courageous homeowners, advocates, and courageous Latinxs, including thousands of Presente.org members boldly holding a Latino leader accountable — is what tipped the scales, and is what resulted in much-needed relief and better housing policy for thousands of families across the country.

Many of the mortgages HUD was selling were for the homes of poor people from Latino and Black neighborhoods. With HUD’s blessing, Wall Street has been buying them and flipping them, disrupting communities and accelerating gentrification and massive displacement for profit. HUD could be selling these mortgages to nonprofits and community-based financial institutions dedicated to providing affordable housing and keeping people in their homes when possible. Instead, it has been selling them to the same Wall Street banks that created the housing crisis in the first place.

As a result of our campaign pressuring Sec. Castro, HUD walked back an auction that would have sold more homes to Wall Street last month. And last week, HUD announced changes to the program that will protect homeowners and start selling more of these mortgages to community-oriented nonprofits rather than exploitative Wall Street banks. While much remains to be done, we applaud Secretary Castro for heeding our call and being an accountable leader.

In April, Presente.org and a coalition of 11 housing advocacy, progressive, and community organizations organized a campaign at DontSellOurHomesToWallStreet.org, calling on Sec. Julian Castro to institute urgent reforms to HUD's mortgage sales. In just a few weeks, the petition gained more than 117,000 signatures.

For more than a year and a half, community organizations have called for improvements to HUD’s mortgage sales that would ensure more homeowners are given principal reduction and that a much larger percentage of mortgages are transferred to nonprofit entities committed to rebuilding communities ravaged by foreclosures. In this effort, the campaign has garnered support from Elizabeth Warren, The New York Times editorial board, and 45 members of Congress who signed a congressional letter to HUD and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).

This campaign was an important step towards helping our communities and showing that we can move our leaders to step up. Sadly, when our campaign began, the reaction from some groups was intense and nasty. Our actions were attacked by other politicians and groups who were upset by our challenge to a prominent Latinx political figure. They attempted to smear us as illegitimate and inauthentic, calling us a front group for many of the white-led organizations that have supported us and joined us as allies – despite the fact that our staff and our board are almost entirely Latinx. They said it was improper for us to question the progressive bona fides of a prominent Latino politician and tried to paint our campaign as a political hit job.

Our allies in this campaign came under immense pressure to back down as well. Some caved to the pressure — fearing the backlash of influential donors and political players — temporarily fracturing the coalition of voices calling for housing policy that prioritizes everyday people over Wall Street profits. Interestingly, none of the critics of our campaign defended Secretary Castro’s policy of selling distressed mortgages to Wall Street, or addressed the issue at hand.

These kinds of attacks aren’t new to us. Years ago, when our criticism of President Obama’s deportation policies was harsher and more direct than what was being said by other groups, we received similar pressure and attacks. When we launched campaigns pressuring the FCC to preserve net neutrality and reject consolidation in the telecom industry, we found ourselves at odds with those who are often supported financially by the industry.

Like any public servant, Secretary Castro deserves to be judged on his record. At HUD – where his mission has been to promote affordable housing – he had, until now, presided over a policy that enabled Wall Street bankers to extract even more wealth from our communities. Rather than damaging Sec. Castro, this campaign gave him a chance to demonstrate his leadership and accountability, and improve his progressive credentials while helping communities. It made him a better leader. This is how political accountability works – and it’s necessary for a healthy democracy. Accordingly, it was entirely appropriate to question whether HUD's policy of selling mortgages to Wall Street (with insufficient protections for homeowners) could be considered progressive.

We didn’t get here by backing down or listening to those who told us we were speaking out of turn. Our responsibility is to our members and our urgent mission. We will hold any politician accountable — Latinx or otherwise — when they take actions that harm our communities.

Now, more than ever, government and private sector leaders must be aggressively held accountable to the interests of Latinxs and other marginalized communities. We know from experience that if we do not demand this accountability, our interests will not be represented. We also know that when we do advocate for our interests — directly, forcefully, and persistently — we can achieve important victories for our communities and create better leadership in the process.

—

Matt Nelson

Executive Director, Presente.org

@PresenteOrg @NelsonVision

This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.

Make YOUR voice heard!

Housing Rights VICTORY: How we won after demanding better from Sec. Julián Castro

Comments are closed on this story.