Twenty-two states have passed legislation allowing and encouraging municipalities to start PACE programs. San Francisco, Sonoma and Placer counties in California, and Boulder County in Colorado have all recently launched programs, and Los Angeles and San Diego are set to begin ones later this year.

But they've all come to a sudden halt after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage-finance corporations, sent a cryptic letter [PDF] to lenders on May 5 warning them away from PACE programs.

It has halted the creation of jobs and energy efficiency improvements that PACE provides. All the momentum that new PACE programs had has been killed and it is due to some puzzling reasons. The FHFA's concerns are already addressed in the Best Practices created by the Department of Energy. In reality PACE financing decreases the chance of default on a home loan.

Please download the PDF below to see how PACE addresses the concerns of the Fannie, Freddie, and the FHFA.

Dear _________,

As your constituent, I ask you to support the "PACE ASSESSMENT PROTECTION ACT," which guarantees local government the right to establish clean energy programs, known as Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE).  PACE is a local government solution that helps home and building owners finance energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements and is supported by a century of legal and historical precedent for special assessment districts, including more than 37,000 districts that have been used to finance sewers, sidewalks, and other projects that serve a public purpose.   

I strongly believe that recent actions by federal regulators infringe upon state’s rights to utilize assessment districts and that PACE is good for our nation’s housing industry and mortgage investors.  The regulators disagree.  We must protect our state’s rights and let the facts and data from our nation’s PACE pilot programs determine who is correct . I urge you to support legislation so our nation’s PACE pilot programs can proceed. 

In just the past two years, twenty-two states have passed laws enabling local governments to develop PACE programs (CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, LA, ME, MD, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, TX, VT, VA, WI).  State and local governments have embraced PACE because of its tremendous potential to cut energy bills, increase homeowner cash flow for mortgage payments, reduce mortgage default risk, create tens of thousands of local jobs and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by spurring investment in clean energy improvements.  PACE has received strong bipartisan support nationwide – in red states and blue states – because creating jobs, saving energy and reducing utility bills for families and businesses is important to all Americans.  Our nation’s PACE programs were set to launch a 24 month pilot period this summer, funded by $150 million in grants from the Department of Energy, incorporating safety and soundness consumer and lender protections that were developed by a White House led inter-agency working group consisting of HUD, NEC, OMB, CEQ and DOE. 

Unfortunately, despite PACE’s great promise, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC, collectively the “Regulators”) issued recent statements blocking our nation’s PACE pilot programs.  The Regulators action is a direct challenge to state’s rights to levy tax assessments for a public purpose and wrongly asserts that the consumer and lender protections were not sufficient. The DOE funded PACE programs have been specifically designed to help the mortgage market yet the Regulators statements simply rehashed old concerns that were cured (See PACE response to the Regulators concerns).  Because of FHFA’s oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and OCC’s influence over our nation’s banks, the statements forced existing PACE programs to halt and froze the ability to launch PACE programs already under development nationwide.  

Congress, which chartered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and which established FHFA & OCC, must quickly intervene to pass legislation that guarantees the right of state and local government to form special assessment districts to promote clean energy programs and restore the promise of PACE.  

Sincerely,
___________

PACEnow.org has tools for passing PACE bonds on a federal level. We need people urging their Representatives and Senators to save PACE.

VoteSolar.org also lets you easily send a message to your Senators and Representative to support PACE.