Appearing in National Mortgage News on March 16, 2026, Brad Finkelstein quotes Diane Thompson, NCLC’s deputy director and chief advocacy officer, and Odette Williamson, director of racial justice advocacy at NCLC, for coverage of President Trump’s executive order which aims to loosen mortgage lending regulations.
Many of the rules the EO looks to unwind were put into effect by the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis and the slipshod underwriting practices that led to it. That’s precisely why some are raising alarms.
The National Consumer Law Center predicts that the deregulation will recreate the perilous conditions that led to the Great Financial Crisis.
“President Trump’s order would turn the clock back to 2006, when the foreclosure crisis and Great Recession were just beginning to take their toxic toll. Millions of foreclosures and trillions of dollars in lost home equity are not the future we deserve.”
Diane Thompson, deputy director and chief advocacy officer at NCLC.
Beyond undoing Dodd-Frank reforms, the rule would allow regulators to gut statutes passed in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the NCLC argued.
“For decades, we have worked to ensure that all borrowers, including Black, Latino and Native American borrowers who have historically been discriminated against, get the credit they have earned. This order reverses those efforts and opens the door to rampant racial discrimination in mortgage lending.”
Odette Williamson, NCLC’s director of racial justice advocacy.
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