Advocates are working on what is perhaps the most important way you’ve never heard of to prevent another foreclosure crisis: reforming the Home Mortgage Disclosure Actpublic hearings on updating HMDA, which requires mortgage lenders to provide detailed public reports of their mortgage lending activities to regulators and the public. Our Senior Vice President, Geoff Smith, testifies at the hearing in Chicago September 16. (HMDA). HMDA is a crucial tool in the fight against discriminatory and predatory lending. If you’ve read any of our reports on mortgage lending or used our community lending fact book, you’ve seen how HMDA data can be used to detect and target discriminatory lending practices and study patterns of community investment. The HMDA data currently collected is not sensitive enough, however, to detect some of the problematic practices that triggered the foreclosure crisis. Over the next few weeks, we’ll explain where data collection must be improved so that regulators can stop problems before they balloon into crises and advocates can effectively fight for community investment.