Housing & Credit

We must work together to redefine what it means to make it easier for Americans to acquire a home, afford rents and mortgages, and avoid unnecessary costs and fees. Additionally, Americans deserve less barriers with regard to acquiring good credit for goods and services which will require greater scrutiny and a review of credit bureaus, financial institutions, and their processes and procedures.

Americans deserve a place to live and access to good credit. They shouldn’t have to face unnecessary barriers and jump through hoops to get good credit. As your future U.S. Senator, here’s how I intend to help the housing market and contribute to the tradition of acquiring credit:

• I support national rent control, capping rent increases at no more than 2.4 percent or 1.2 times the rate of inflation, whichever is higher, and allow states and cities to impose more stringent rent control standards. Additionally, any increases in rent will need to come with justification and before any increases become final, the burden rests with landlords to prove tenants should be able to pay the additional amount imposed. 

• Protecting individuals who’ve had previous evictions and foreclosures from being prevented from acquiring a future home. Why should individuals be prevented from housing? The burden should rest with the landlord to provide justification. 

• Americans must be protected against subprime mortgages and other schemes like it by carefully reviewing the requirements for obtaining a mortgage and providing a more efficient plan for homeownership that’s good for buyers and sellers. 

• Address homelessness in general in America. (See Poverty Section). 

• Start by taking a closer look at the requirements to obtain mortgages and/or rents and conducting a complete analysis of requirements along with costs/fees, for the purposes of establishing disparate impact. Disparate impact in the United States, in this case refers to practices in housing that adversely affect one group of people of a protected characteristic more than another, even though the rules applied by landlords appear to be neutral. 

• Working with the credit bureaus to eliminate score reductions for the following insensible reasons which may show disparate impact:

  • Basic credit inquiries

  • Credit accounts closed

  • Types of loans received 

• Credit bureaus should be held responsible for showing the codes and/or algorithms by which they use to determine the rise and fall of a certain set of points in credit scores and making it illegal for them NOT to provide this type of information. As the majority of Americans continue to be impacted by their scores in insurmountable ways, these systems must yield to greater scrutiny. How does a credit bureau determine how many points one’s credit should go up or down and how often?