Attorney General Andrea Campbell holds a press conference on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024 announcing that her office is suing social media company, TikTok. Photo by Chris Lisinski | State House News Service
Attorney General Andrea Campbell made clear Tuesday that she doesn’t agree with the Legislature and Gov. Maura Healey that a Boston nonprofit that has been accused of predatory lending should be shielded from the state’s consumer protection laws.
The state’s top law enforcement official said on GBH Radio that she and her office made clear to the governor that they were opposed to Section 269 of the economic development bill that lawmakers sent Healey on Nov. 14, and which Healey then signed on Nov. 20.
That portion of the new law effectively protects BlueHub Capital, a Roxbury nonprofit that was sued in 2020 over predatory lending allegations, from being held liable for “monetary relief, injunctive relief or other equitable relief at common law or by statute.” The nonprofit buys properties from banks that are foreclosing on homeowners, then resells them to their original owners while taking on part of a shared appreciation mortgage that entitles BlueHub to a portion of an increase in the home’s value.
“Let me be crystal clear: We have opposed this, and we have lended our advocacy to constituents in that opposition. We’ve also flagged that, yes, there’s a court litigation right now by constituents who felt as though this program did not benefit them. That is ongoing and there could be a result soon,” Campbell said. “We don’t win every battle at the State House, and I don’t want to suggest that we don’t work closely with the folks there. There are some things, of course, in the econ bill that we appreciated, we worked with the governor on, we worked with the state legislature on. But on this particular provision, we did not think it should have passed.”
Homeowners suing BlueHub allege that the nonprofit misled them into debt without sharing necessary information that they’re entering into a shared appreciation mortgage, but the nonprofit says the program has helped hundreds of families stay in their homes and that they have complied with the law.
Campbell said she never talked about the BlueHub Capital part of the bill with the governor directly, “but we made it crystal clear to folks in the State House and the administration that we were opposed to this.”
An anti-BlueHub protester interrupted Healey during a speech at a Retailers Association of Massachusetts event in Waltham last week after she signed the legislation. Healey, who has political and personal connections to BlueHub’s CEO Elyse Cherry, responded by pointing to her own tenure as attorney general.
“I went after the subprime predatory lenders. I’m pretty well-schooled in this. And we took them on and took them down. So I probably, more than anybody, know what it means to stand up for homeowners and fight predatory lending,” the governor said during the event.
Campbell said her opposition stems from her time on the Boston City Council, representing a district that included parts of Mattapan and Dorchester. She said companies that operate in a forthright way should have no problem complying with the state’s consumer protection laws because they’re designed to weed out unscrupulous operators.
“We have some of the strongest consumer protection laws in the country. And if you give one product or one company an exception, you open up the floodgates potentially for others to also then begin to seek out an exception. And that’s concerning to us,” the attorney general said.
Campbell said she is still deciding what comes next. The new law says that the attorney general “may promulgate rules and regulations to implement this subsection.” Perhaps seizing upon the “may” rather than the more forceful “shall,” Campbell said Tuesday that the BlueHub-related language in the economic development law is “not necessarily mandatory.”
“And so now we are sitting with the possibility of having to come up with some regulations. So we’re figuring this out,” she said.
