Chairwoman Waters and Ranking Member Brown Call on the Fed and Treasury To Address Servicer Liquidity

On April 15, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), Chairwoman of the House Committee of Financial Services, sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urging them to use their existing authorities to ensure that the housing market, including nonbank mortgage servicers, has sufficient liquidity to stabilize the housing market and continue to serve and protect homeowners and renters for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis. 

This letter follows two others sent from Capitol Hill last week – an April 8 bipartisan letter [add link] from members of the Senate Banking Committee and a April 10 letter signed by 21 Republican HFSC members. Both letters also encouraged Treasury and the Fed to provide a liquidity vehicle to help single-family and multifamily housing mortgage servicers provide consumers with the economic relief they require. And on Monday April 13, the HFSC letter was referenced in a question to Secretary Mnuchin during the White House press briefing to which he replied, “We’re very aware of the issue…we’re going to make sure that the market functions properly.” 

SFA shares the concerns raised in the letter and issued a statement on April 4 calling on regulators to provide a source of liquidity to those mortgage servicers that may need additional capacity to support homeowners and renters impacted by COVID-19. SFA will continue to advocate for the creation of a liquidity facility for mortgage servicers and keep its members informed of any developments.