New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is not pleased with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for starters. So much so, that if elected the next president, he vows to deregulate the entity and roll back some recent initiatives.
More pointedly, during his time on stage at the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation’s housing summit, he said TRID is “another example of government creating more problems than it solves.”
He was responding to a question from Pamela Riesenberg, a branch manager for local lender Finance of America Mortgage.
After, Riesenberg shared her support of Christie’s answer.
“I would do exactly what Gov. Christie said,” Riesenberg said. "They’re pushing so much onto the consumer the home market is suppressed.”
Christie would likely agree with her. He said that after Hurricane Sandy, his state lost 365,000 homes and the federal government was too bloated to get aid moving fast enough to those homeowners.
TRID, he said, makes matters worse, as it may ask for documents those potential homeowners lost during the storm.
“There’s just more delays, more confusion,” he said, “it doesn’t allow reasonable people to get the matter closed and the house bought.”
The question on TRID came after a question on his views on abortion and was followed by a question on his views on troops in Afghanistan.
This promoted a fourth question: “Why is it so hard to stay focused on housing?”
Christie said, “It’s not a sexy issue, it depresses people.”
He earlier added that health and housing move in lockstep and earlier in his speech bemoaned the “food deserts” — where affordable housing also tends to sit in areas without access to fresh fruit and vegetables for the housing recipients in his state.
“Too much benefit in housing goes to people with a lot of money.”
Former New York Gov. George Pataki, who followed in the slot right after Christie, who also recommends deregulation in housing. He even took a moment to disparage the recent decision by HUD to look at the impact of disparate impact.
“I think this is going to have a terrible impact,” he said. “This poses a threat to local officialdom I’ve never seen in my lifetime.”
“We don’t need this plethora of agencies. Dodd-Frank is an impediment to lending,” he said. “If there is a Pataki administration, we’re going to put an end to that.”
