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I'm really happy to be serving as Chair of the House Banking and Financial Services Committee this session, in particular, because the predatory lending and the foreclosure crisis that's just rocking our state is such a big deal and so important to my constituents that I'm happy to be sort of in a position of power to affect change in this issue. And so what we have in my committee right now is a package of bills that is designed in sort of a forward-looking way, making sure that predatory lenders can't ply their trade in Michigan. We've seen it in the past and we know that predatory lending has contributed to the housing crisis in Michigan and in Saginaw so far. We don't want that to happen again. What we've seen in the past is lenders who give mortgages to people that they know that the borrow can't repay. They know that the borrower is failed from the start. And the tricks of the trade, so to speak are buried in the mortgages that they sell. And so someone takes out a mortgage, happy that they only have a $300 or $400 mortgage payment, and they can afford that, but after a year their mortgage rate goes up to to say $1,500 or $1,800 or $2,000 and all of sudden, they've got to give up their house.

Now this is one of those issues, from a consumer standpoint, the cost of doing nothing, the cost of not confronting predatory lenders is too high because look up and down the streets in my community and you'll see many houses that are on the market, not because someone wanted to move, not because someone wanted to sell their house, but because they were snookered into taking out a mortgage that they couldn't afford and now they're having to give up their property, give up their home, because it's in foreclosure.

These families are forced to find another place to live, if they can afford one, find a way to repair their credit, and find a way to put a house and roof over their family's head. It's absolutely devastating communities. We want a fair playing field and we don't want a system that allows unscrupulous lenders to take advantage of citizens and consumers. So I'm really excited to be working on this package I think that this is going to really change the playing field in Michigan to make it more consumer-friendly.