March 4, 2025
Protecting the CFPB’s Overdraft Fee Rule
I am a signatory to a letter being sent to the House’s Committee on Financial Services, in opposition to H.J. Res. 59 (Hill), CRA Resolution to Overturn CFPB Rule on Overdraft Lending: Very Large Financial Institutions. The letter states,
The undersigned 278 consumer, civil rights, labor, legal services and community organizations and academics write to urge you to oppose H.J. Res. 59 (Hill) and any other effort to overturn the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s overdraft fee rule, which will reduce most overdraft fees from $35 to $5, stop manipulative practices by big banks, improve transparency, and put $5 billion back into the pockets of everyday people and their families. The public widely views current overdraft fee practices as unfair.
The overdraft fee rule closes a paper-check era loophole that has allowed big banks to trick people into paying excessive overdraft fees and earn billions in profits off of the most vulnerable families. The rule lowers most so-called “courtesy” overdraft fees from $35 to $5, saving households that pay overdraft fees an average of $225 a year. The rule gives big banks a variety of options to cover overdrafts, including safer, more transparent overdraft lines of credit with no price limit and the same disclosure requirements as credit cards. The rule only applies to very large institutions with over $10 billion in assets, many of which have already adopted similar protections. Smaller banks and credit unions are completely exempt.
We urge you to stand with everyday people over big banks. Banks should not profit off the struggles of working families through excessive, back-end overdraft junk fees. Please oppose H.J. Res. 59.
March 4, 2025 | Permalink | No Comments
February 12, 2025
The Brewing Constitutional Crisis
Benjamin Franklin bust by Jean-Antoine Houdon
437 law professors (myself included) from across the country have signed the following statement to call attention to the constitutional crisis that the nation is now facing.
A CALL TO URGENCY
The opening weeks of the second Trump administration convince us, as law professors who have spent years studying the American legal system, that we are beginning to see unfold the gravest threat to the rule of law and its constituent principles – the separation of governmental powers, the independence of prosecutorial authority, the inviolability of human rights, the transparency of government action, and the sanctity of constitutional accountability itself – ever presented in our lifetimes. The president’s and his associates’ actions, and threats of action, profoundly undermine the bedrock principle of our federal government system – that the Chief Executive and his agents are constrained by the United States Constitution. The fundamental guardrails of our constitutional democracy itself are threatened and notably battered. They are, as we write, at risk of complete collapse.
We recall that Benjamin Franklin warned, when asked by Elizabeth Willing Powell whether he and his colleagues had delivered “a republic or a monarchy,” that we have “a republic” but only “if you can keep it.” We hope that all Americans, and especially all lawyers, will recognize the gravity of this situation and will be prepared to answer that challenge with the urgency required in the days, weeks, and months ahead.
You can find the current list of signatories here.
February 12, 2025 | Permalink | No Comments
December 17, 2024
Federal Home Loan Banks’ Liquidity Role During Financial Crises
The historic Federal Home Loan Bank Board Building CC BY-SA 4.0
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has invited me to participate in a review of the Federal Home Loan Banks’ Liquidity Role During Financial Crises. I have previously written about the FHLBs here. The invite reads in part,
GAO is an independent, nonpartisan federal agency that supports Congress by evaluating federal programs and activities. In response to a request from the House Committee on Financial Services, our team is conducting a review of the Federal Home Loan Banks’ (FHLBank) liquidity role during financial crises.
As part of our work, we plan to provide Congress and the public more information on the strengths, limitations, and feasibility of certain changes that academics, interest groups, and others have suggested to address perceived issues with FHLBank lending during crises. We identified the changes through a review of academic, trade, and grey (dissertations, blog posts, etc.) literature since 2007. We then narrowed the list down to a shorter list of changes for further discussion. While we recognize there is currently substantial discussion around the FHLBanks’ housing mission and membership, we are focusing on FHLBanks’ lending to banks. Please note that the changes to be discussed are not GAO recommendations.
The GAO is seeking input “from individuals, organizations, federal agencies, and FHLBanks on the list of changes to address concerns with FHLBank lending during crises.” I had previously written that while the FHLBank System
was originally designed to support homeownership, it has morphed into a provider of liquidity for large financial institutions.
Banks like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citibank NA and Wells Fargo & Co. are among its biggest beneficiaries and homeownership is only incidentally supported by their involvement with it.
As part of the comprehensive review of the system, we should give thought to at least changing the name of the system so that it cannot trade on its history as a supporter of affordable homeownership. But we should go even farther and give some thought to spinning off its functions into other parts of the federal financial infrastructure as its functions are redundant with theirs.
This GAO review is a good start to subjecting the System to such a comprehensive review!
December 17, 2024 | Permalink | No Comments
October 28, 2024
Social Housing, Federal Style
U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) and Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently introduced the Homes Act which would establish a Housing Development Authority. The HDA is based on the Social Housing Development Authority bill introduced in New York earlier this year.
I was on a panel that discussed the pros and cons of the New York bill. The recording of the panel can be found here.
More specifically the federal bill would
- Establish a national Housing Development Authority to acquire and develop real estate to create and maintain a stock of permanent, sustainable, affordable housing, including single- and multi-family housing, with robust tenant protections.
- Empower local communities to address their specific housing needs by financing real estate acquisition or conveying property to public housing authorities, mission-driven nonprofits, tenant- or resident-owned cooperatives, state or local governments, and community land trusts.
- Require the housing development authority to maintain portfolio-wide affordability by setting aside 40% of units for extremely-low income households and 30% of units for low-income households.
- Cap rents for units financed under the Act at 25% of a household’s adjusted gross income and cannot increase more than 3% per year.
- Support homeownership by allowing residents to purchase homes under shared equity models and providing relief to mortgage borrowers at risk of foreclosure due to market instability or economic distress.
- Provide workers with strong labor protections building this new housing.
- Provide tenants with opportunities to come together to purchase their buildings prior to large, for-profit developers buying them.
- Provide funding to rehabilitate and address the backlog of necessary improvements for public housing and repeal the Faircloth Amendment to allow new public housing.
- Authorize $30 billion in annual appropriations, combined with a revolving loan fund to recoup and reinvest funds back into housing. Annual appropriations include a 5% minimum set aside for Tribal communities and a 10% minimum set aside for rural communities.
(This is from AOC’s press release, linked to above.)
October 28, 2024 | Permalink | No Comments
October 23, 2024
Foreclosure Rescue Scam Shut Down
I recently served as an expert witness in a forfeiture proceeding that stemmed from an expansive criminal scheme to defraud vulnerable New York City residents out of their homes. I was a pro bono expert on behalf of one of the homeowners. Judge Ramos (SDNY) ruled in favor of the homeowner, relying in part on my testimony regarding due diligence norms in real estate transactions. United States v. Meiri, 15 Cr. 627 (ER), 2024 WL 451230 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 17, 2024), The opinion can be found here.
The Opinion & Order opens,
This forfeiture proceeding stems from an expansive criminal scheme to defraud vulnerable New York City residents out of their homes or other properties. From around January 2013 to May 2015, Herzel and Amir Meiri, along with five other defendants, operated an organization known as “Homeowner Assistance Services of New York” (HASNY). The defendants targeted owners of distressed properties, inviting them to seek HASNY’s assistance to save their homes from foreclosure. Under the pretense of a loan modification or a short sale, the defendants then tricked the victims into transferring their properties to one of the defendants’ entities. The defendants generated millions of dollars in profits through this fraudulent enterprise.
The scheme eventually came undone, and criminal proceedings were initiated. The Meiris pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and they agreed to forfeit more than thirty properties to the United States. Two of those properties, both located in Brooklyn, are at issue here. the first is 2146 and 2148 Fulton Street, which the defendants stole from Mary and Samuel Nyamekye. The second is 644 Chauncey Street, which the defendants stole from Olive and Vincent Holmes.
After stealing those properties, the Meiris used them as collateral to secure loans from Petermark II LLC and Advill Capital LLC. Petermark and Advill have filed third-party petitions asserting an interest in the forfeited properties. The companies maintain that they made the loans without actual or constructive knowledge of the Meiris’ fraud. The United States, however, contends that Petermark and Advill were on notice of the fraud due to numerous red flags. Mr. Nyamekye and Mr. Holmes have filed third-party petitions as well.
October 23, 2024 | Permalink | No Comments
October 7, 2024
Cornell Law School is Hiring a Transactional Clinician
Cornell Law School is hiring! We are looking for a clinical professor of entrepreneurship law who will work with our Entrepreneurship Law Clinic and our newly formed Blassberg-Rice Center for Entrepreneurship Law. Our students work with clients with a diverse range of entrepreneurial efforts, and in the process gain valuable skills for their legal careers. If you are interested in helping to train the next generation of entrepreneurs and the lawyers who will serve them, please consider applying. Or if you know of other suitable candidates, please let them know of this great opportunity in Ithaca. The job positing is here.
October 7, 2024 | Permalink | No Comments
September 18, 2024
The History of Housing Finance
I was happy to present on the History of Housing Finance as part of the Structured Finance Association’s SF Academy series, hosted by Elen Callahan, the SFA’s Head of Research & Education. You need to sign up to access the SF Academy content (although I have covered similar content in many other venues) for those who do not want to bother). The SFA website states that the
September 18, 2024 | Permalink | No Comments
