Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 20, 2023
Fed Should Pause Interest Rate Hikes, California Community Builders Urges
Increases Threaten to Worsen Housing Crisis, Hurt Americans of Color
CONTACT: Adam Briones, California Community Builders CEO, 510.961.3957, abriones@ccbuilders.org
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA – As the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee gets ready to begin its quarterly meeting tomorrow, California Community Builders is urging the Fed to pause interest rate hikes – for reasons that go well beyond the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the tremors that its collapse sent through the banking system.
“No one likes inflation, but the Fed must consider the real harm that the past year’s drastic hikes in interest rates have done,” said California Community Builders CEO Adam Briones. “We agree with a wide array of leaders, from Senator Elizabeth Warren to top economists like Dean Baker, who have warned that skyrocketing interest rates often hurt our most vulnerable citizens, who are the first to lose their jobs when the economy slows. Last September, Dean Baker observed that these big interest rate increases ‘make the most disadvantaged groups pay the price for slowing a burst of inflation that they did not cause.’ He was right, then and today.
“Much of what we hear about inflation from Fed Chair Jerome Powell and others ignores the elephant in the room: housing costs that are crushing millions of American families,” Briones continued. “Soaring interest rates have sent housing starts plummeting – down 18.4% in February compared with a year ago. If you crush housing construction, you crush any chance of housing costs coming down in the near future. Why isn’t the Fed talking about that?”
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CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY BUILDERS
Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Through Housing & Homeownership