Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, made clear Tuesday that banking policy will not be the sole area of focus for the committee that he will chair in the new Congress.
Brown said housing issues received short shrift when the GOP ran the Senate Banking Committee, but that will change under his leadership.
“Housing determines so much in peoples’ lives. It determines closeness to a grocery store. … It determines the school district your children live in,” Brown said in a press conference about his priorities.
He noted that the committee's full name — Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs — often gets overlooked. “You will always hear me call it Banking and Housing," Brown said. "Housing was a word left out of this committee’s title for far too many years and it won’t be left out anymore.”
A housing area of immediate concern for the committee, Brown said, will be protecting residents from being evicted in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.