His career has hardly been limited to the public sector, with past stints that include a role as president/COO of the Long & Foster Real Companies, Inc.; executive vice president of wholesale lending at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage; senior vice president in charge of single family lending at Freddie Mac; and group senior vice president at World Savings Bank.
Diagnosed with cancer, Stevens addressed the gathering via a videotaped message. He was asked what is the greatest challenge facing the US is today.
America is not alone in raising rates
“Interestingly, globally we’re all going through a period of quantitative tightening,” he told the international crowd. “The central banks across the world have been raising interest rates and that’s obviously impacted the mortgage industry the worst. It’s been the greatest challenge. It’s also the greatest adverse impact to potential homeowners, and it hurts the most first-time home buyers, of which a significant percentage are people of color.”
Given America’s past, much work is left to be done in evening up the playing field in terms of homeownership as Stevens suggested. “The one thing that’s clear and different about us over Western Europe is that we were a nation built on slavery and we didn’t give opportunity until the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1965.
That landmark decision outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. “And we still have issues with racism and lack of opportunity,” he said. “Now this is not a political statement; it’s an economic one. And the economics to this is that America has a need to try to find opportunities to create homeownership, particularly for the Latino community in this country and the African American communities in this country.”
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