Biased Lending Evolves, and Blacks Face Trouble Getting Mortgages (NY Times)
<...> The results were stark. In 2014, Hudson approved 1,886 mortgages in the market that includes New Jersey and sections of New York and Connecticut, federal mortgage data show. Only 25 of those loans went to black borrowers.
Hudson, while denying wrongdoing, agreed last month to pay nearly $33 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Justice Department. Federal officials said it was the largest settlement in the history of both departments for redlining, the practice in which banks choke off lending to minority communities.
Outlawed decades ago, redlining has re-emerged as a serious concern among regulators as banks have sharply retreated from providing home loans to African-Americans in the wake of the financial crisis.
Over just the past 12 months, federal, state and city officials have successfully required banks to expand minority lending programs and, in some instances, to pay penalties as part of redlining settlements in Buffalo; Milwaukee; Providence, R.I.; Rochester; and St. Louis. And more banks are facing scrutiny. The Justice Department now has more active redlining investigations underway than at any other time in the past seven years, officials said. <...>
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/nyregion/hudson-city-bank-settlement.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Not surprising, given the way the RW tried to blame the financial crisis on black folks "buying houses they couldn't afford." And I think this is one of the issues the candidates have to focus on if they are serious about the BLM campaign: they have to demonstrate that it's not enough to talk about prisons and policing and focus at least as much energy on improving education and economic opportunities in black communities, too, including black home ownership. To its credit, Pres Obama's DOJ has been pursuing some of this redlining from banks, but it needs to be even more aggressive--and the Democratic candidates need to talk about ways it will intervene to make sure the practice is curtailed under their respective administrations, including a discussion of that they have already done to confront the issue.
= new reply since forum marked as read
