A credit union executive was among the 12 appointees to the Department of Housing and Urban Development's new Housing Counseling Federal Advisory Committee aimed at making counseling more accessible for new homebuyers and troubled homeowners.
Jose Larry Garcia, vice president of community development at GECU, a $2.4 billion credit union in El Paso, Texas, was selected as one of the representatives of the mortgage industry on the new panel. In addition to his tenure at GECU, Garcia is also the president and CEO of the El Paso Credit Union Affordable Housing Inc., an affordable housing credit union service organization.
Created by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the Housing Counseling Federal Advisory Committee's task is to improve housing counseling and develop innovative strategies to support community-based counseling agencies.
The advisory committee, which is slated to hold its first meeting in August, includes three representatives from each of the four mortgage, real estate, consumer and housing counseling sectors.
The panel's goal, HUD said, is to "expand access to HUD housing counseling programs, develop new innovative strategies to support community-based counseling agencies, and identify methods to leverage our resources to amplify the impact of federally funded housing counseling."
