Every April, Fair Housing Month celebrates the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, which made discrimination in housing transactions unlawful. This is a valuable time to acknowledge our progress in addressing discrimination, reflect on persistent barriers, and renew our commitment to responsibly ensuring equal opportunity and fair access to sustainable housing.
Fair lending has always been an important part of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) mission. We closely review and examine our regulated entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), as well as the Federal Home Loan Banks, for fair lending and fair housing compliance. This vigilance helps protect consumers by ensuring our regulated entities fulfill their legal responsibilities to treat everyone fairly.
FHFA also recently announced a newly formed division, the Division of Public Interest Examinations (DPIE), that will focus on all aspects of FHFA’s public interest supervision. The new Division is responsible for supervisory oversight of the Agency’s regulated entities in the areas of affordable housing, community development, diversity and inclusion, consumer protection, and fair lending. This new division will further empower our examination teams to ensure our regulated entities operate with the public interest firmly in mind – a core part of FHFA’s statutory responsibilities.
We have also taken steps in recent years to identify and address barriers to sustainable housing opportunities for homeowners and renters. In 2021, FHFA instructed the Enterprises to develop Equitable Housing Finance Plans (the Plans), which are grounded in the belief that all borrowers and renters, including those in underserved communities, should have access to safe, decent, and affordable housing opportunities.
The Plans include goals and actions that each Enterprise will take to promote equal opportunity in housing finance. The Plans have produced tangible benefits that increase fairness to all borrowers. Through these efforts, the Enterprises supported 1.8 million families in 2023, almost double the impact from the first year of their Plans. For example:
- Both Enterprises partnered with multiple vendors to encourage multifamily property owners to report positive rental payments to credit bureaus, which supported close to 735,000 renter households, many of whom were able to establish credit scores for the first time.
- Freddie Mac established a Renter Resource Organization program and expanded its free CreditSmart financial and homeownership education curriculum.
- Fannie Mae launched several Spanish-language courses on its HomeView education platform and created Spanish-language fact sheets, as part of a renewed focus on the Latino housing journey.
These Plans represent a meaningful step forward, and have evolved every year to incorporate lessons learned, new research, and emerging issues.
Based on the early success of the Plans, FHFA recently finalized a rule codifying the process for developing and revising the Plans, as well as many other components of FHFA’s existing practices and programs regarding oversight of fair housing and fair lending. The rule also clarifies the Agency’s authority with respect to unfair or deceptive acts or practices and includes requirements for the Enterprises to collect and report language preference, homeownership education, and housing counseling information.
These announcements complement a host of ongoing actions by the Agency to promote fairness in the housing market. FHFA regularly publishes fair lending data to provide the public with relevant information. The Agency monitors mortgage application approval rates and loan acquisition shares by race and ethnicity for each Enterprise and makes this analysis publicly available. We recently updated and improved our public presentation of this data. FHFA also works closely with our federal agency partners to strengthen enforcement of fair lending laws.
Upholding fair housing principles is critically important in creating and sustaining vibrant communities. We are continuing to identify and implement solutions that will strengthen our regulated entities’ commitment to fair and sustainable housing.
We know that today, there are still tenants facing unfair rental practices, homeowners fighting appraisal bias, and aspiring homeowners hindered by unequal access to credit. We will continue our work to vigilantly address these issues, and to ensure every American has access to safe, affordable, and sustainable housing opportunities.
Tagged: Source: FHFA; Fair Lending; fair housing