President of the Center for Responsible Lending
Mike Calhoun discusses his role in the passage of the 1999 North Carolina Predatory Lending Law while working at Self-Help and the type of subprime lending he observed and which gave rise to the bill’s creation and passage. Calhoun also discusses his involvement with the Georgia Fair Lending Act and how the opposition to that legislation was much stronger than the opposition to the North Carolina Predatory Lending Law. Calhoun explains the events that occurred after the passage of the Georgia Fair Lending Act, such as the ratings agencies refusing to rate certain loans and the later weakening of the Georgia Fair Lending Act. In addition, Calhoun discusses the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act and how it drew from the North Carolina and Georgia laws.
Date Recorded:
April 14, 2022
Interviewed by:
Sam Wolter
Mike Calhoun is president of the Center for Responsible Lending. His career started in Legal Aid of North Carolina, where he worked on consumer issues including predatory lending. While working as the general counsel of Self-Help, a community development credit union, Calhoun spearheaded research into subprime lending and this work contributed to the passage of the 1999 North Carolina Predatory Lending Law. Calhoun was also involved in enacting the Georgia Fair Lending Act, signed into law in 2002. He holds a Juris Doctor from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Duke University.
This hearing contains Mike Calhoun’s opinions as a member of the Federal Reserve System Consumer Advisory Council. The topic of the meeting is Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act, foreclosures, and the implementation of Truth in Lending Act and the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act. Calhoun speaks about different aspects of HOEPA and what the Center for Responsible Lending has noticed lending market that was concerning.
This report examines federal and state level legislations against predatory lending and if they are effective against predatory subprime mortgages. This report discusses sections of the North Carolina Predatory Lending Law and its impact on the supply of high-cost subprime mortgages.
This article discusses the Georgia Fair Lending Act and presents perspectives that believe the act could have protected the Georgia housing market from the housing bubble that burst. Some opponents of the bill believe enacting the bill would have froze credit and forced the Georgia housing market to lose value even before the national market did. Mike Calhoun is quoted in the article as believing the act would have had a positive result on Georgia’s housing market.
This testimony was given by Mike Calhoun in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The main topics of the testimony are the role the lack of regulations played in causing the financial crisis, Dodd-Frank making lending fairer and still making credit available and CFPB being important for preventing future housing crisis.
