Today, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund submitted a comment to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in opposition to its proposed rule on disparate impact.
The 45 undersigned consumer, housing, civil rights, labor, and community organizations write to express our strong opposition to the proposed changes to the disparate impact standard (“Proposed Rule”) as interpreted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”).
Americans for Financial Reform welcomes the introduction of The Students Not Profits Act, let by Representative Pramila Jayapal, and Senators Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren. The for-profit college industry is plagued with bad outcomes for students, has a record of law breaking and abuse, and is responsible for 34% of student loan defaults, despite only enrolling 9% of post-secondary students. The Students Not Profits Act is a welcome and bold step to ensure that public dollars are not supporting and enabling malfeasance.
Over the course of two days, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Kathy Kraninger, is testifying before both the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committees. These are the top questions that Director Kraninger must answer as she testifies:
A coalition of 27 civil rights, community, consumer and other groups challenges CFPB’s consideration of reducing home lending disclosure, a critical tool to stop lending discrimination and hold banks accountable for their record of lending to communities of color and lower income neighborhoods.
On October 9th, AFR joined with 41 organizations representing in a letter to Senator Lamar Alexander expressing concerns regarding his recently introduced bill, the Student Aid Improvement Act. Unfortunately, the bill fails to include any provisions that hold low-quality and sometimes predatory colleges accountable, and better protect students and taxpayers. Any reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) must include robust consumer protections.
Today, Americans for Financial Reform joined 62 other organizations on a joint letter to Senate appropriators urging them to oppose the overall Labor-HHS-Education spending allocation and the accompanying proposed $1.3 billion rescission from the Pell reserve fund and to instead fully retain all current Pell funds where they belong – in the Pell Grant program.
As candidates vie to set the agenda for the next presidency, Democratic primary voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina strongly support a tough approach to oversight and reform of Wall Street, according to a new poll conducted by the bipartisan team of Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting.
“I think really the most striking thing about this polling has been its consistency,” Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, told Vox. “The experience of the crisis was a really deep and serious one for people. It may have faded into memory of some policy makers and some regulators, unfortunately, but it has not faded in people’s memory because the experience was long-lasting for people.”
Americans see the need for tough enforcement of existing rules, even after hearing opposing arguments that stress a danger in the role of government. They strongly support the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that Congress passed in response to the financial crisis, as well as additional measures to fight continuing industry abuses.