HUD and CFPB help housing by restoring free speech

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Thanks to the commendable actions of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), April has been a red-letter month for free speech and better-informed consumers in the housing sector. This month, HUD and the CFPB have taken actions stating that straight talk about neighborhood crime and school quality will not be punished by either agency as discrimination.

For the past few years, through signals and punitive actions, HUD and the CFPB made real estate agents and others in the mortgage sector afraid to discuss crime or school quality with prospective clients, and even targeted speech about these topics to general audiences on internet platforms and podcasts. Although this free speech crackdown was rationalized as an effort to fight discrimination, the result was that all homebuyers were denied vital information about the quality of life in the neighborhoods where they were considering buying.

As Stone Washington and I noted in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Examiner, the CFPB charged mortgage firm Townstone Financial in 2020 with violating the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) simply for speaking frankly about crime in Chicago neighborhoods on the firm’s radio show and podcast. The CFPB relentlessly persecuted Townstone until the firm settled and paid a $105,000 penalty to the CFPB in late 2024. After President Trump appointed Russ Vought as acting director of the CFPB in early 2025, Vought quickly denounced the CFPB’s actions in this case and has attempted to refund the penalty to Townstone.

Last week on April 22,  the CFPB issued a final rule adopting a new interpretation of ECOA that, as described by the law firm Baker Donelson, “prohibits statements of intent to discriminate in violation of ECOA and is not triggered merely by negative consumer impressions.” Two days later, HUD announced that “providing prospective homebuyers with information about school quality and crime data is not a violation when it is shared consistently without discriminatory intent.”

HUD and the CFPB have taken solid steps toward guaranteeing free speech in the housing sector that will allow mortgage and real estate professionals to better inform consumers about the homes they wish to buy. Congress should codify these laudable actions into law.