Public Citizen Urges House to Defeat Bills That Abuse Borrowers
April 13, 2015
Public Citizen Urges House to Defeat Bills That Abuse Borrowers
Statement of Bartlett Naylor, Financial Policy Advocate, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division
Note: In a letter (PDF) sent today to members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Public Citizen calls for lawmakers to oppose a suite of bills that would harm consumers of financial services.
House lawmakers should not make things worse for homebuyers. Instead, representatives should oppose a suite of harmful bills when they come up for a vote early this week.
Two bills in particular deserve rejection: H.R. 650, which exposes buyers of manufactured housing to greater predatory practices by raising the thresholds for protections under existing law; and H.R. 685, which further enables the dubious title insurance industry – a type of insurance made superfluous by modern records management systems.
A recent investigation of the nation’s largest manufactured housing company revealed widespread consumer abuse. Meanwhile, title insurance is a product with little purpose. It doesn’t even exist in most countries.
Congress should be finding solutions to these problems, not exacerbating them.
The other bills Public Citizen opposes are: the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Advisory Boards Act (H.R. 1195); the Helping Expand Lending Practices in Rural Communities Act (H.R. 1259); the Bureau Advisory Commission Transparency Act (H.R. 1265); the Mortgage Servicing Asset Capital Requirements Act of 2015 (H.R. 1408); the Community Institution Mortgage Relief Act of 2015 (H.R. 1529); and the Eliminate Privacy Notice Confusion Act (H.R. 601).
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