Federal Reserve Racial and Economic Equity Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. GARCIA of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2543, the Financial Services Racial Equity, Inclusion, and Economic Justice Act. Let me repeat the words, this is what we are talking about: racial equity, inclusion, and economic justice.

I thank Chairwoman Waters for bringing this legislation forward and for her leadership on all these important issues. I thank Chairman Green who is the chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for navigating us through this bill being heard today.

Specifically, I will speak about two bills which have been included in this important package, such as the Improving Language Access in Mortgage Servicing Act.

According to the U.S. Census, over 20 percent--that is one out of five--households in the United States speak a language other than English, and nearly 9 percent of households lack a proficient English speaker.

Homeownership is an opportunity to build generational wealth and speaking another language should never be a barrier in home buying and mortgaging.

This legislation will establish language access requirements in the eight most commonly spoken languages in the United States, besides English, for creditors and servicers to ensure that Americans who lack English proficiency are not at a disadvantage while buying a home.

Imagine getting something from your mortgage company telling you you owe something or that you are at risk of maybe being foreclosed on, but it is all in English, and you speak no English. Of course, you will end up being in foreclosure because you don't understand the notice that you are getting. This is what my bill is about.

The second bill is the Studying Barriers to Housing Act, which has also been included in this package.

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Ms. GARCIA of Texas. Mr. Speaker, this legislation will require the GAO to conduct a study to identify housing barriers that contribute to the issue of homelessness.

This study will find laws, regulations, common practices, and funding formulas that create barriers to housing in an effort to pinpoint the problems in our system that cause homelessness to continue and grow.

I am proud of both of these bills, and I hope that both of these bills pass to increase expanded language access and to find the root causes of homelessness.

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