LISC Home Ownership Summit 2002
Remarks as prepared for delivery
by Secretary Mel Martinez
Washington, DC
Thursday, November 21, 2002
Good afternoon.
Thank you, Dwight [ROBINSON], for your very generous introduction.
I also want to thank Hal Wilson for the invitation to meet with
you this afternoon. President Bush and I feel strongly that we must
commit ourselves as a nation to helping more families know the many
benefits of homeownership - especially minority families. I appreciate
the opportunity to come here and tell you what our Administration
is doing to make that happen.
The LISC Home Ownership Center is doing important work to promote
the value of homeownership to communities, and spark innovative
homeownership opportunities on the local level. Your technical assistance
programs and workshops, annual summits like this one, and efforts
such as your focus on rural housing are making a difference to families
seeking a home of their own.
Earlier this year, the President reminded us that a cornerstone
of America is the fact that someone - regardless of who they are
or where they were born - can say, "I own this home, it is
my piece of property, it is my part of the American experience."
America places a high value on the benefits of homeownership, and
for good reason. Homeownership creates community stakeholders who
tend to be rooted participants in their communities. Homeownership
offers children a stable living environment that influences their
personal development in many positive, measurable ways at home and
in school.
Equally striking is homeownership's potential to create and spread
wealth. It is an engine of social mobility and the path to prosperity
for the vast majority of families. By a large margin, Americans
see a home as a safe investment, and they are right. Last year,
Americans took $80 billion out of the wealth they had accumulated
in their homes to make investments in education, consumer goods,
and new businesses.
However, many Americans have yet to enjoy these benefits. We see
a wide disparity in the homeownership rates of non-Hispanic whites
and minorities.
HUD recently announced that the overall homeownership rate rose
to 68 percent during the third quarter of 2002. Hispanic and African-American
homeownership was also up. But while the trend is in the right direction,
we still have a long way to go: while three quarters of white Americans
are homeowners, less than half of Hispanic and African-Americans
own a home of their own.
President Bush says this homeownership gap is a "signal that
something might be wrong in the land of plenty," and he has
vowed to close it. In June, he issued a challenge to his Administration
and to every segment of the housing industry - public, private,
and non-profit - to close the gap by helping 5.5 million more minority
families own homes by the end of the decade. When he gathered us
together last month for the first-ever White House Conference on
Increasing Minority Homeownership, he had a simple message. He said,
"We want everybody in America to own their own home."
We call our response to the President's challenge "the Blueprint
for the American Dream Partnership." Our partnership is unprecedented
in scope, and sets out to close the minority homeownership gap by
harnessing the resources of the federal government to those of the
housing industry. I am pleased that so many of our partners are
actively involved in this homeownership summit. We are grateful
for your contributions, your energy, and your commitment to achieving
the President's goal.
The Blueprint partners are focused on four key areas. The first
is education.
It is important that families looking to purchase a home are educated
about the homebuying process. They also need reliable, understandable
information about their options for financing.
The vocabulary of mortgage lending and the process of buying a
home are confusing and complex for even the experts; imagine how
difficult they must be for a first-time homebuyer, or someone for
whom English is a second language. The fact that there are some
unscrupulous people who want to take advantage of the system adds
to the problem.
We are working to provide consumer education, particularly to immigrants
and minorities who are not familiar with the homebuying system,
to make them more comfortable entering into the largest and most
important financial transaction of their lives.
Our "Homebuyer Bill of Rights" will simplify the homebuying
process and make it less confusing and costly. And we are committed
to enforcing the law to stop predatory lenders from doing business.
The Administration is targeting unscrupulous lenders by pooling
the resources of the federal government and helping us work across
agency lines. As a result, we are becoming much more effective in
tracking down lenders who target first-time homebuyers, senior citizens,
and minorities for predatory practices.
We are also deeply committed to educating the housing industry
about its legal responsibility to prevent discrimination and the
need for our partners to take responsibility for educating future
homebuyers about their legal rights.
A study we released last week points out how crucial this is.
We found that discrimination based on race and ethnicity has declined
25 percent among African-American and Hispanic homebuyers during
the past decade. That is welcome news, and represents a tremendous
decline.
But the results make it clear that our work is far from over, because
too many Americans are still being denied the opportunity to live
in the home of their choice. One in five minority homebuyers still
experiences discrimination. The problem is nearly as bad for minority
renters. In fact, Hispanics face rental discrimination at
the same levels they faced more than a decade ago.
In this land of opportunity, no one should be denied housing because
of the color of his or her skin or their ethnic heritage. Our Administration
will continue working to end housing discrimination.
Of course, it is hard to buy a home when there is no affordable
housing to be found. In some limited parts of the United States
- and particularly in our nation's inner cities - the average working
family cannot find a house on the market that is within their price
range. In spite of overwhelming need, very little new construction
of single-family homes occurs today in lower-income neighborhoods.
The most common cause is that the cost of developing such housing
in an economically distressed area would exceed the property's market
value.
The federal government can play a role in boosting the supply of
affordable housing by helping to bridge the gap between the cost
of development and the value of single-family homes. Our Administration
has proposed establishing a single-family affordable housing tax
credit that would pump $1.7 billion over the next five years into
affordable housing development in high-priced urban areas. The credit
would be available to developers through a competitive program administered
at the state level. We estimate that enacting it would spur the
creation of 200,000 new units available for homeownership.
The proposal is modeled after the very successful Low-Income Housing
Tax Credit. Representative Bob Portman of Ohio is sponsoring the
legislation in the House, while Senators Gordon Smith, Orrin Hatch,
and Rick Santorum have agreed to carry the bill in the Senate. We
hope lawmakers will make this a priority when the 108th Congress
convenes in January.
Ultimately, the decisions that have the greatest impact on housing
affordability are not made in Washington. They are made on the state
and local levels, and come in the form of building and growth controls
that can add thousands of dollars to the cost of land and construction.
These regulatory barriers include restrictive and exclusionary zoning,
rent controls, environmental regulations, high impact fees, and
burdensome permitting and approval requirements.
It is no accident that many of the cities facing affordable housing
shortages also have the tightest restrictions on growth.
HUD wants to help communities break down these barriers. Today,
I am unveiling a new tool they can use. The Regulatory Barriers
Clearinghouse gathers housing knowledge from across the country
into a single website. By giving builders and developers a place
to share ideas and solutions for overcoming state and local regulatory
barriers, we think we can help to spur more affordable housing opportunities.
You can visit the Clearinghouse at www.regbarriers.org.
The Blueprint partners are also focused on helping families who
have qualified to buy a home, but come up short on the down payment.
If a buyer is in every other way an outstanding candidate for homeownership,
they should not be blocked from buying a home by the high cost of
a down payment.
President Bush proposed the American Dream Downpayment Fund to
help 200,000 low-income families make the move into homeownership
over the next four years. We are also expanding an innovative homeownership
program that eases the transition from renting to owning for low-income
families. The program provides them with vouchers they can use for
a down payment or mortgage payments.
The final focus of the President's homeownership challenge is helping
minority homebuyers - especially low-income families shopping for
their first home - to have better access to capital and more financing
options. I am proud to say that our partners in the real estate,
mortgage finance, and nonprofit sectors have stepped forward with
many invaluable contributions.
Our partners are creating new mortgage products to combat predatory
lending and meet the needs of immigrants. They are increasing their
investments in minority markets by nearly $500 billion. They are
expanding consumer information and homeownership counseling. And
they are engaging in faith-based and community housing partnerships.
These investments and initiatives will reap tremendous benefits
for individual families and for the nation as a whole. We studied
the potential economic benefit of adding 5.5 million first-time
minority homebuyers by 2010 and found that it totaled a staggering
$256 billion. An increase in minority homeownership creates more
jobs, increases consumer spending and the economic security of neighborhoods,
and most importantly, is a "capital engine" for working
families.
Boosting homeownership among minorities is the right thing to do
and now is the right time to do it.
While we are passionate about increasing the ranks of America's
homeowners, our agenda is broad and covers every aspect of housing
and urban development.
Along with promoting homeownership, we continue to provide those
who rent with affordable, safe, and decent housing opportunities.
Three-quarters of the HUD budget - or about $23 billion next year
- is dedicated to supporting the rental costs of low-income individuals
and families. Our rental assistance programs collectively help more
than four million rental households.
Along with help for renters, we continue to help communities meet
housing and other needs through HUD's Community Development Block
Grants and our HOME program. And our Administration is deeply engaged
in pursuing solutions to homelessness. I have issued a challenge
to end chronic homelessness within the next ten years. At my urging,
President Bush reactivated the Interagency Council on Homelessness.
And he doubled its funding. The Council's job is to better coordinate
the efforts of the many federal departments that fund homeless services.
That is a very broad outline of what we do at HUD.
My job at HUD may not be the most visible in the Cabinet, but it
is certainly one of the most enjoyable and rewarding. Because like
you, I understand what it means to help a family up - to give them
the kinds of opportunities that come with homeownership.
As we transform America socially through homeownership, we will
also be bridging the gap that exists between our majority and minority
communities, a gap that I believe is economic more than anything
else.
And as we create more homeowners among our minority ranks, we will
empower communities of people with the kinds of economic opportunity,
economic well-being, and independence that come with homeownership,
which is how middle-class America has been able to create wealth
from one generation to the next. And I believe that will be a very
healthy and positive thing for our country.
So I hope you have a very successful conference. I encourage you
to keep up your good work, because it is profound. It is life changing.
I know it changed my life when we became homeowners in America,
and I know it can do that for so many other American families. So
thank you for what you are doing. And thank you for allowing me
to be a part of your day.
Thank you very much.
Content Archived: March 16, 2010
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