Expanding American Homeownership Act of 2006

EXPANDING AMERICAN HOMEOWNERSHIP ACT OF 2006

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Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address a very important part of this bill that increases Americans' access to reverse mortgages.

Reverse mortgages are a tremendous vehicle by which Americans can get access to the equity in their home to make it available for health care, for assistance, for travel, for education; and now this bill will take three big steps forward to make reverse mortgages more available.

First, it will do so by having a uniform national cap so that it will remove this cap in a lot of areas in the country that have prevented Americans from having reverse mortgages.

Secondly, it will make it available for, essentially, homeownership, which might be in the best interests of senior citizens.

Third, it will remove the cap on the number of reverse mortgages that essentially can go through the FHA home equity conversion program, which now issues 90 percent of the reverse mortgages in the country.

So this is a fantastic opportunity, particularly for our seniors to be able to have access to the equity in their homes. It is a big stride forward. I know a lot of seniors are going to take advantage of it to make sure they can stay in their homes, to use their equity to finance having health care and assistance in their homes to give them their liberty.

I want to thank the bipartisan effort to put this together. I also want to thank noted author Tom Kelly who has been a great advocate for getting these reverse mortgages used by more Americans.

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