SIFMA and the SIFMA Asset Management Group provide comments to the Mayor and City Council Members of Richmond, California discouraging the use eminent domain to seize mortgage loans. The groups believe that the execution of these plans to use eminent domain will result in a serious contraction of credit availability, as lenders and secondary market sources of funding react with defensive, very stringent underwriting criteria. 

Richmond City Council members: Vice Mayor Courtland Boozé, Councilmember Jovanka Beckles, Councilmember Thomas K. Butt, Councilmember Jael Myrick and Councilmember Jim Rogers each received identical comments. 

The groups included a Memorandum on Eminent Domain Proposals by O’Melveny & Myers, LLP.