Letter to Benjamin Carson. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Mark Calabria, Director of Federal Housing Finance Agency, Robert Wilkie, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, and Sonny Perdue, Secretary of Agriculture - Federal Housing Authorities Act to Protect Renters at the Request of Waters, Sherman, and Clay

Letter

Dear Secretary Carson, Director Calabda, Secretary Wilkie, and Secretary Perdue:

As you know, millions of Americans are struggling to afford routine bills and expenses as a
result of the current COVID-19 pandemic. For many families and individuals, the single largest
financial burden that they will face during this period is paying for the roof over their head.
Your respective agencies have recently taken actions to implement several provisions of
H.R.748, the CARES Act, which provide a variety of new protections for renters and
homeowners. These include a temporary moratorium on foreclosures and forbearance options for
homeowners with federally-backed mortgages; a temporary moratorium on evictions for renters
who cannot pay their rent and live in properties that are federally subsidized or have a federallybacked mortgage.

While these new protections represent an important step in the right direction, they lack the
certainty that broader protections for all U.S. homeowners and renters would provide. For
individuals to know if they are covered by current protections, they must first know whether the
home they rent or own is federally-backed or falls under a federally-assisted program. While
homeowners can generally get this information by contacting their mortgage servicer, not all
homeowners are aware that they can and servicer capacity is currently overwhelmed. Meanwhile,
renters are forced to rely on their landlord's disclosure of that information, if they have it. Yet,
there is no legal obligation that requires landlords to disclose their federally-backed mortgage status to tenants. Without public access to accurate information, both homeowners and renters
cannot effectively assert their right to housing protections during this deadly pandemic.

We strongly urge HUD, FHFA, VA, and USDA to coordinate swiftly to make this information
available to the public in a centralized location online. We recommend that this user-friendly
database include all properties covered under the CARES Act and include a function that allows
the public to search for properties by street address. Anyone accessing this database should be
provided with an instant and automatic explanation that details the protections available to them
under the law and which federal entity backs the mortgage on the home.

A significant amount of this data is currently available online, but it is not centralized, not userfriendly, and it is not all publicly available. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac currently maintain a
single-family database through loan look-up tools on their respective websitcs, while HUD
maintains a database of multi-family properties that is updated on a monthly basis and maintains
publicly available data on many of its rental assistance programs. We understand that it may take
time to hilly consolidate this information into a single, comprehensive database for all housing
units covered under the CARES Act; however, we believe that any data that is currently
available, and as it becomes available, should be aggregated as soon as possible.

Without this critical information, it will be difficult and confusing for homeowners and renters to
know whether they are entitled to federal housing protections under the CARES Act during this
uncertain and stressful time. Until such a database is made publicly available, HUD, FHFA, VA,
and USDA should immediately issue guidance to landlords with federally-backed mortgages and
mortgage servicers notifying them to disclose tenant and borrower protections upon request. We
look forward to working with you on this issue to ensure housing protections during this
pandemic are secured for everyone, beginning with centralized public access to this basic
information.

Sincerely,

Source