As National Association of Mortgage Field Services (NAMFS) members are buying their families sleighs filled to the brim with extravagant holiday gifts, the Labor they utilize are scraping together what little money they have hoping to keep their utilities on. In fact, not a single penny has been allocated for Labor to protect them during COVID. Not a single penny has been allocated for PPE to protect Labor. And not a single penny has been allocated to assist these mandatory, front line workers.
Nearly eight million Americans have fallen into poverty since this summer, according to a new report, in part because emergency benefit programs expired. More Americans are filing for unemployment benefits, and the pace of hiring has slowed.
The subsidization of the Mortgage Field Services Industry by state federal government agencies, by and through programs such as food stamps, LEAP, WIC, rental, and utility grants has skyrocketed over the past several months. The Industry is beginning to look much like how the US Government subsidizes Wal Mart and McDonald’s. Moreover, though, while profits remain astronomical for NAMFS members, much of Labor are still fighting tooth and nail to simply be paid.
As Labor is staring down yet another tax season tabulating mind boggling losses, many are asking why Eric Miller, NAMFS Executive Director, continues to refuse to release their tax returns mandated under federal law.
More and more, Labor is being requested to buckle down and take the hit as NAMFS members continue lining their pockets. And while NAMFS members are continuing to say that with volumes anticipated to increase next year, it justifies the numerous requests for no bill services now, the reality is that costs remain the same no matter how much volume exists. In the same way that trickle down economics has now been disproven to have ever helped anyone but the rich, volumes never offset the profits lost to providing $3 inspections during COVID in hopes that those assets will, one day, be delivered for initial services.
Much of the economic damage from congressional inaction on stimulus for the last eight months is already done. And while the backslapping is ongoing on The Hill about the $900 Billion package they are poised to sign, the reality is that it is to little, far too late. The pace of jobs coming back from the 22 million we lost to Covid-19 is way down and potentially headed to zero this month. Weekly initial jobless claims are creeping back toward 1 million, a massive number still well above the pre-Covid record. Retail sales tanked a worse than expected 1.1 percent in November, the second monthly drop in a row as household incomes continue to fall without more federal support.
Biden is planning to restore two key Obama-era fair housing rules and step up enforcement of laws cracking down on discriminatory lending — a reversal of a four-year campaign by the Trump administration to roll back efforts to tackle racial segregation. The president-elect has pledged to reinstate a 2015 regulation that would have required local governments to take active steps to end segregation or else lose federal funding — what Trump called an attempt to “abolish the suburbs.” After delaying the HUD rule and proposing revisions, the Trump administration scrapped the regulation altogether in July.
Trump’s HUD finalized a new rule in September overhauling the Obama administration’s “disparate impact” rule targeting housing practices that disproportionately affect minorities, even when no discrimination is intended. The new rule would have made it more difficult to bring claims of unintentional discrimination and given defendants more leeway to rebut the claims, but a federal court intervened the day before the new regulation was set to take effect this fall.
Biden has also voiced support for expanding and bolstering the Community Reinvestment Act to ensure that the anti-redlining law applies to non-financial institutions like insurance companies and mortgage lenders. The Trump administration released a revamped rule this year that could make it easier for some banks to meet their lending obligations with large-dollar investments in, say, a stadium in a low-income area, rather than many smaller mortgage loans to Black families in the neighborhood. And the incoming administration is expected to revive the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has dramatically reduced enforcement of fair lending laws under Trump appointees.
With or without volumes attributed to COVID, the reality is that President elect Biden may very well be good for the Industry.
