National Fair Housing Alliance Complaint Against safeguard Properties

Floor Speech

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the National Fair Housing Alliance and the Toledo Fair Housing Center filed a Federal housing discrimination complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development against Safeguard Properties headquartered in Ohio. Safeguard is the Nation's largest privately held mortgage field services property preservations company. Their business model involves maintaining and marketing bank owned, foreclosed homes (REO properties). The National Fair Housing Alliance and its member organizations have recently gathered evidence that shows that companies like Safeguard are neglecting and failing to maintain foreclosed homes in minority and low income neighborhoods.

In Toledo, Dayton, Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Memphis, Safeguard has failed to prevent blight from entering into the neighborhoods that are most venerable in our country. In an Office of the Inspector General report they were named as one of the preservation companies that would provide inaccurate information and would manipulate photos of foreclosed properties that it managed in their reports to Fannie Mae. We cannot allow these big corporations to continue taking advantage of the American people. I would encourage more States and representatives to investigate situations like this and send a message to these companies that we will not sit back and allow them to profit off of the suffering of the American people any more.

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