Building Up Independent Lives and Dreams Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LOUDERMILK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stivers) not only for yielding time in support of my bill but giving the creative one in my family recognition for the pithy acronym that goes with this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, as has been stated, my bill is the Building Up Independent Lives and Dreams Act, which is also known as the BUILD Act.

First, I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have worked with me to make this a strong, bipartisan effort.

I appreciate the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) for cosponsoring this bill and for his work, with our staffs working together, to make this is a bill as perfected as we can.

I thank Chairwoman Waters and Ranking Member McHenry for recommending this bill to come to the floor for a vote.

I also thank the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez) for her support and cosponsorship of this important legislation.

Last year, it was brought to my attention that certain regulations enacted by Dodd-Frank were placing a significant burden on charitable organizations that provide low-cost housing to needy families. These nonprofits were having to spend an excessive amount of time and resources complying with these new regulations, which were ultimately designed for large mortgage lenders.

The time and effort that they were spending on regulatory compliance was taking resources away from these nonprofits' core mission of providing affordable housing.

The problem, as I learned, was that the Dodd-Frank Act required the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to combine the TILA loan estimate and the RESPA closing disclosure forms into one integrated mortgage disclosure form called TRID.

While the intention of the new TRID forms was to ensure that home buyers received essential information about the costs and terms of their home loans, the unintended consequences of this one-size-fits-all approach significantly impacted nonprofit organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity.

The TRID rule is nearly 2,000 pages long, very complex, and includes disclosure forms for things such as balloon loans and adjustable rate mortgages. While these types of loans may be applicable to traditional mortgage lenders, they are not relevant to these nonprofits. These new rules and their associated forms have caused confusion for home buyers, staff, and volunteers of these charitable organizations.

To further complicate the matter, the new TRID disclosures were designed to be completed by computer software. However, these software applications are much too costly for many local Habitat affiliates and other nonprofits.

The vast majority of more than 1,200 Habitat groups nationwide are small, community-based organizations with very small mortgage portfolios. Few, if any, have full-time staff. These organizations have experienced challenges with the costs and the complexity of the TRID mortgage disclosure forms.

To remedy these problems, and to provide regulatory relief to these nonprofits, the BUILD Act exempts charities from the cost and complexity of the new TRID rule but still ensures that the terms of these mortgage loans are disclosed.

Mortgage lenders that make five or fewer loans a year are already exempt from TRID and are allowed to use the much simpler forms that were in place prior to Dodd-Frank. The BUILD Act simply extends this same exemption to nonprofits that are eligible for tax-exempt charitable donations and are making zero-interest mortgage loans, regardless of how many mortgage loans they are making per year.

The BUILD Act will allow local Habitat facilities, and other similar nonprofits, to choose whether they use these older but simpler forms or the new, more complicated TRID forms.

In closing, I want to reiterate that the purpose of this bill is to help charitable organizations spend more time fulfilling their mission, which is providing low-cost housing to needy families, and less time sitting in an office doing regulatory paperwork.

The bill recognizes that one size does not fit all, especially when it comes to regulating these charities, and it gives them the flexibility to choose which mortgage disclosure forms work best for them and for those they help.

As my colleague Mr. Sherman has already brought up, this bill passed the Financial Services Committee and the House unanimously last Congress. I hope that we can repeat that again today here in a few moments.

I urge all of my colleagues to join me in support of this important bill.

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