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Comment

I live in San Francisco, California where I have seen how rising and unequal home values have affected the amount of affordable housing and the growing racial wealth gap. Over the last 10 years, I've watched most of my friends leave San Francisco. Now the only ones left are millionaires or the children of millionaires. And they are almost all white, which makes it a huge challenge to have friends of color. I personally advocate for every affordable housing development, homeless shelter, and mixed income housing project, but we need federal action to fix a nation-wide problem.

I recognize at the root of these problems is increasingly unequal home values. Given this, I support the FHFA implementing the following:

1. Standardized measures. Adopt new smartphone applications that provide more consistent estimates of gross living area, number of rooms, and home amenities.

2. Define neighborhoods. Modernize the uniform appraisal form to automatically define neighborhood boundaries and characteristics to decrease racial and class bias in neighborhood definitions.

3. Change comparative method. Reform the comparable sales approach and/or introduce an alternative method that does not rely on past sales which are directly tied to racist redlining practices.

4. Democratize data. Make the federal data on appraisals available so that individuals and communities can identify experiences of racial and class discrimination.

5. Provide federal mortgages. Partner with other governmental agencies to address the legacy of redlining by providing affordable federal mortgages based on family wealth and income.