WASHINGTON — Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Kansas City, introduced a bill on Wednesday that aims to prevent deed fraud, an ongoing issue where people forge a deed in order to steal possession of a person’s home.
Cleaver raised the alarm about the increasing number of deed fraud cases in the Kansas City area last month and pledged to file a bill in Congress to address the issue. The result is legislation that attempts to arm authorities with more resources to address the crime.
“While this will not solve the problem overnight, the Good DEED Act is critical to understanding the scope of the problem nationally and an important step toward protecting law-abiding Americans from getting ensnared in one of these nefarious schemes,” Cleaver said in a press release.
The bill would create a $10 million grant program that the Department of Housing and Urban Development would use to investigate and prosecute deed fraud. States would only receive funding from the program if they pass a law that would require proof of identity for people notifying and filing deeds. It would also direct the U.S. Sentencing Commission to enhance sentences related to deed fraud.
Cleaver is the chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development and Insurance and pledged that he would push for the bill to move quickly through Congress. That may be difficult, as Congress isn’t set to return until after the election and Cleaver’s Democratic Party is projected to lose control of the House.
Because it deals with funding, it’s possible that Cleaver’s bill will be added as an amendment to a larger spending package in the future, a tactic that is often used when trying out new grant programs.
In the meantime, Cleaver said he wanted to see action at the state level. Deed fraud has been an issue for a number of years — in 2017, the Star reported on the case of Deborah Maxwell, who had her home stolen — but the state legislature has done little to address the issue.
“I highly encourage Missouri and other states to begin working on updating their own laws to eradicate these scams before they become even more prevalent and harmful to members of our communities,” Cleaver said.
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