Justice Dept. Fights Bias in Lending

New York Times ^ | January 13, 2010 | Charlie Savage

[reaganaut1]

The Justice Department is beginning a major campaign against banks and mortgage brokers suspected of discriminating against minority applicants in lending, opening a new front in the Obama administration’s response to the foreclosure crisis.

Tom Perez, the assistant attorney general for the department’s Civil Rights Division, is expected to announce Thursday in New York that the administration is creating a new unit that will focus exclusively on unfair lending practices.

“We are looking at any and every practice in the industry,” Mr. Perez said in a recent interview.

As part of an expansion of the Civil Rights Division approved by Congress last year, the Justice Department is hiring at least four lawyers and an economist for the new unit, while about half a dozen current staff members will transfer into it.

Mr. Perez plans to formally announce the new unit at the “Wall Street Project” conference organized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. He characterized the effort as a major turnaround, and criticized the previous administration as failing to scrutinize lending practices amid the subprime mortgage boom.

While past lending discrimination cases primarily focused on “redlining” — a bank’s refusal to lend to qualified borrowers in minority areas — the new push will instead center on a more recent phenomenon critics have called “reverse redlining.”

[reaganaut1]

Pressuring banks to give mortgages to unqualified borrowers to raise minority homeownership is part of what got us in this mess. Now Obama wants a repeat. Since non-Asian minorities save less and earn less on average, fewer of them will qualify for prime mortgages.

Being brown (Asian-Indian) hasn't stopped our family from getting mortgages, because we've had money for down payments and income that well covers the mortgage payment.

[CIB-173RDABN]

Isn’t this what got us into this financial mess in the first place? Forcing banks to loan money to people that can not pay it back.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Isn’t this what got us into this financial mess in the first place?

Economic justice--those who wind up not paying get supported by the rest of us.

[iopscusa]

REPARATIONS, now the real goal is shown!

[synbad600]

Don't do it right, the gubmint will help!

Don't do it right after the gubmint helps, the gubmint will help again!

[C210N]

Stopping to realize we have a migraine, after years of banging our heads against the wall, we decide to continue banging our heads against the wall.

This is the mentality that leads one to think its on purpose to crash the dollar, and re-make it in their image.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Only lending money to people who are probably going to pay it back discriminates against people who probably aren't.

[FrankR]

The solution seems so simple even a cave man could do it.

We have instituted a "credit scoring system" in this country, so there needs to be hard and fast rule that if your credit score is less than a certain level, you don't get the loan...period

Color, creed, and natural origin are not considered at all in the process. Everyone has the opportunity to challenge any credit entries they feel are unjust, so you either get it fixed, or live with it.

There has to be some absolutes somewhere in the process or it will never work.

[TexasFreeper2009]

Banks lend to someone almost exclusively based on their credit report, if the government wants to go after someone it should be the credit reporting agencies.

Blaming the bank for not lending to someone with a 400 credit rating and a recent bankruptcy is ridiculous.

[jiggyboy]

[Joe Boucher]

You said it CIB-173RDABN
only much nicer than I would have.

Not this same shit again.

[Jet Jaguar]

Bump

[Nachum]

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