Skip to main content
Events •

Shelter from the Storm: How a COVID-19 Mortgage Meltdown Was Averted

The COVID-19 pandemic upended our daily lives. The crisis was not only an unprecedented shock to our health care system but also a threat to our economic well-being, including our mortgage and housing markets. Despite the reforms following the 2008 financial crisis, markets were not prepared, and March 2020 brought another financial crisis. When he was the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Mark Calabria led a considerable part of the response to the 2020 crisis. In Shelter from the Storm, he tells the story of how millions of families were provided with mortgage and rental assistance, both to keep them safe and to keep our financial markets functioning. He offers readers a peek behind the curtain of government decisionmaking in a crisis and shows how housing disruptions were minimized at little cost to the public, while resisting calls for Wall Street bailouts.

Featuring
Mark A. Calabria

Former Director, Federal Housing Finance Agency; Former Chief Economist, Vice President Mike Pence; Senior Advisor, Cato Institute

Dana Wade cropped
Dana Wade

Chief Production Officer, FHA Lending at Walker and Dunlop; Former Commissioner, Federal Housing Administration

Norbert Michel

Vice President and Director, Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives