Serious About Housing?
To: Elon Musk
Special Advisor to the President
Department of Government Efficiency
Dear Mr. Musk:
The undersigned call your attention to the ongoing national housing crisis. We also call your attention to the Federal Home Loan Banks established by Congress in 1932 to stimulate housing.
Today, the eleven FHLBanks have total assets of approximately $1.3 trillion. They receive an enormous subsidy courtesy of the taxpayers. They pay no federal or state taxes. They do, however, pay handsome dividends to their member banks and insurance companies and lavish extraordinary compensation on their executives.
It is well documented that the FHLBanks do little to stimulate housing. Effectively, the FHLBanks have abandoned housing as part of their mission.
We urge you to use your good offices with the President to address the matter of the ineffectual FHLBanks. The President should issue an executive order including the following action items:
· First, Require the eleven FHLBanks to immediately increase their commitments to affordable housing to 50 per cent of their net income, and
· Second, Inform the FHLBanks that if they fail to deliver on their affordable housing obligations the Secretary of the Treasury will be directed to renounce the federal government’s either implicit or explicit guaranty of any new debt issued by the FHLBanks.
The first action item will produce an additional 1.2 million units of affordable housing using the FHLBanks’ own measurements. It will also be a material step in addressing the country’s overall housing supply deficit of four million units.
The second action item will eliminate new issuances of FHLBanks’ debt which currently is the nearest competitor in the money markets to the issuance of Treasury securities. As such, yields on Treasury securities will be reduced, as will the cost of servicing the nation’s $36 trillion debt.
The actions outlined here are both urgent and in the public interest. We hope they will receive your prompt attention.
[To add your name as a signatory to this letter, click here.]
William Isaac, Florida
Cody Jordan, Tennessee
Anthony Barbar, Florida
Frank Mayer III, Pennsylvania
Jason Alpert, Florida
Sylvia Fiorenza, Plaza Home Mortgage, Texas
Michael Hanlon, Massachusetts
Paul Siebenmorgen, Indiana
Tom Fries, Florida
Edward McManus, CIDC, Massachusetts
Karyn Edison, Florida
Keith Edison, Florida
Mark Ginsberg, Maryland
Kathleen Callard, Florida
Kathleen Dermody, Massachusetts
Christopher O’Connell, Nevada
Peter Karastamatis, Florida
Jim Hale, Florida
Joseph Meade, Texas
Chad Reed, Massachusetts
Valerie Grant, Florida
Steve Grant, Florida
Cornelius Hurley, Boston University, Massachusetts
Francesca Donlon, Rhode Island
Anthony Perrone, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Washington D.C.
John Treanor, Florida
Sharon Intagliata, Florida
Kim Sowinski, Florida
Janice Carlson, Florida
Steve Grant, Florida
Joseph Alexander, Florida
Michael E. Bleier, Maryland
Joseph Pagnani, Rhode Island