FHA

Hunter Kurtz, Vice Chair and Founding Partner at Gate House Strategies, has spent his professional career working in the affordable housing industry at the local, state and federal levels. In the first Trump Administration, he served as Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well Deputy Chief of Staff to HUD Secretary Ben Carson. At the local level, Hurtz served as Director of the City of Detroit’s Department of Housing and Revitalization, in Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration.

Tell us about your work at Gate House.

I’m on the affordable housing and community development side of the business. I work with local governments, affordable housing developers and public housing authorities, helping them solve problems and unwind the larger issues they face in their work to create more housing opportunities in their communities. Housing needs and solutions are always uniquely local. Boise isn’t Fort Wayne which isn’t Mobile which isn’t San Antonio. We know how to guide local officials and their partners to be as effective in meeting their goals as possible. We help identify what they can seek from the federal government and other sources of financing, tools and unique solutions that are best suited for them. And because the full Gate House team covers a full spectrum of experience in the government, the private sector and the financial markets, we are effective in helping clients navigate the different players and cultures involved in successful community development efforts. Public housing authorities have their unique language, as do lenders, federal officials, and housing developers, just to name a few of key players in any proposed project. Gate House specializes in helping all of them better understand each other and work together for results.
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What can the federal government do under the incoming administration to make things better for localities working to create affordable housing?

Mostly get out of the way. Look, housing is having a moment right now because the affordability crisis has risen to the level of an urgent national policy agenda matter. The new administration will be under pressure from all sides to produce real solutions. But for the most part, the biggest hurdles that local affordable housing practitioners face are rules and regulations.
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Going after unnecessary regulatory barriers sounds like something the incoming administration would be very focused on.

Absolutely. For instance, there are so many federal requirements for reports which are quite outdated, and frankly useless. Still, they demand an enormous amount of valuable staff time that could otherwise be spent on solving real problems and creating opportunities. We did an analysis, for example, that revealed public housing authority and tribal housing staffs spend  over 20 percent of their work week producing reports.  Many of these reports sent back to Washington are never read and serve no purpose, yet they are legally required to be submitted. I’m confident the new HUD Secretary will be looking at unnecessary regs that hinder real progress toward greater housing affordability in America. 

Executives and board members in financial services are increasingly held accountable for the actions of their firms. Among their many responsibilities, they are required in particular to be engaged in their company’s efforts to adhere to the letter and spirit of laws that seek to ensure consumer protection.

As the regulatory landscape facing executives in the financial services industry has grown increasingly complex – and integral to their enterprises and their firms’ reputations – so too has the need to demonstrate and document the actions taken by their firms.

Gate House Chairman and Partner Brian Montgomery recently outlined the challenges facing executives in a piece for HousingWire. As he argued, even with the best of intentions, there are often inconsistencies and conflicting interpretations of what firms need or ought to do — and what executives need or ought to in order to stay apprised of their firm’s efforts.  One thing we know it that it will require vigilance and a lot of hard work to get it right.

Recognizing the important need in C-suites and executive board rooms, Gate House Strategies has launched a new subsidiary, Gate House Compliance, LLC, to provide fair lending and compliance management services. The firm, comprised of veterans in financial services and specialists in fair lending and consumer protection law and regulation (and support from CrossCheck Compliance’s deep bench of experts), will advise and support compliance regimes across multiple asset classes, including mortgage, student loan, credit card, and other secured and unsecured credit products.

The addition of Gate House Compliance is a timely and critical expansion of the firm’s ability to serve the growing needs of the industry. After careful examination, clients can choose services that complement their current compliance program, or on a subscription basis, they may utilize Gate House Compliance 365, a comprehensive system of ongoing support of fundamental services and a coordinated, dynamic approach to the management of regulatory risk.

The important policy goals our country require executives to be engaged. They need experience, perspective, and insight in order to do what is right and, and – when the path is made unclear by conflicting policies or interpretations – what is prudent for business.

The goal for Gate House Compliance is to put executives and firms ahead of the curve and ahead of the scrutiny that characterizes the current environment and road ahead. Vigilance and a team of experts with a steady hand will be a must.

Gate House Partner and Chairman Brian Montgomery shared his perspective on the regulatory landscape facing executives in the financial service industry — the need to act responsibly with respect to fair lending laws and to understand the complexity of it all – in a piece for Housing Wire.

“[M]ultiple agencies pursuing the same general goals sometimes creates inconsistencies or conflicting interpretations of policy, making it difficult for financial institutions to navigate uncharted waters, even with the best of intentions.” Montgomery wrote.

Montgomery, who served as Deputy Secretary of HUD and FHA Commissioner twice, emphasized the risks, particularly in the areas of lending and loan servicing: “Recent regulatory actions have targeted marketing practices, credit allocation and product offerings,” he said, with top executives more often being held accountable for their “company policies, procedures, operations, and culture.”

With risk to the firm not only financially but reputationally, the need to “identify gaps that may exist in their knowledge and experience and structure management teams accordingly” is paramount if they are to demonstrate to overseers that they possess a comprehensive approach to their compliance obligations.

Private industry participants have their work cut out for them as they go about the critical work of upholding the letter and spirit of our country’s fair lending laws, Montgomery said. Both private firms and government must work together at times, with private industry willing to serve as partners to government and the government for their part providing “transparency, open dialogue and technology improvements” to make our system work.