WASHINGTON—The Defense Credit Union Council is urging House lawmakers to preserve and expand several long-sought credit union reforms in the final version of the amended “21st Century Housing Act,” warning that the current legislation provides broad relief to community banks while leaving credit unions at a competitive disadvantage.
“Credit unions should not be left navigating regulatory uncertainty while banks receive clear statutory authority to innovate,” stated Anthony Hernandez, DCUC president/CEO, ret. U.S. Air Force colonel. “A truly balanced framework must preserve consumer protections while ensuring credit unions can compete fairly, responsibly, and safely in the next generation of financial services.”
In a letter sent to House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill and Ranking Member Maxine Waters Monday, DCUC Chief Advocacy Officer Jason Stverak said the trade group supports the housing package’s broader goals of expanding housing supply, modernizing outdated systems and improving access to homeownership, particularly for servicemembers, veterans and working families.
“But support for the bill’s goals cannot mean silence about its imbalance,” Stverak wrote, arguing the legislation continues to emphasize strengthening community banks while failing to provide equivalent consideration for credit unions. “If Congress is going to help community-based depositories serve housing needs, it should do so fairly and not in a way that leaves credit unions standing outside the relief window looking in.”
The letter asks lawmakers to take three specific actions before final passage. First, DCUC urged the committee to preserve Section 904, the Credit Union Board Modernization provision, which would provide well-run federal credit unions greater flexibility in meeting board meeting requirements while maintaining stricter standards for de novo and weaker-rated institutions. Stverak described the proposal as a “practical, targeted, and overdue” governance modernization that would allow credit unions to devote more resources to member services and mortgage lending.
Second, DCUC called for permanent reform of the Central Liquidity Facility (CLF), including restoration of pandemic-era authority allowing corporate credit unions to serve as agent members for smaller institutions. Stverak said expiration of that authority left more than 3,300 mostly smaller credit unions without access to the system’s lender-of-last-resort framework and reduced available liquidity by nearly $10 billion. For military-serving and rural credit unions, he argued, the issue directly affects mortgage lending, small-business lending and emergency consumer credit availability during periods of financial stress.
The group also urged lawmakers to include loan-maturity flexibility provisions backed under the Expanding Access to Lending Options Act. Current law still subjects many federal credit union loans to a 15-year maturity cap that does not apply to banks. DCUC said allowing the NCUA to extend maturities to 20 years or longer—and permitting 30-year terms for all one-to-four-unit residential mortgages—would improve affordability and better serve military families planning long-term housing needs.
“It is not radical,” Stverak wrote. “It is rational. And it is long overdue.”
Stverak emphasized DCUC is not asking Congress to "take anything away from community banks, he wrote. We are asking Congress to stop drawing a policy circle around community banks and treating credit unions as an afterthought when the same burdens, the same Main Street obligations, and the same community-finance mission are present on both sides.”