Friday, November 1, 2024

CFPB Files Order to Stop Townstone Financial’s Unlawful Redlining

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has filed a proposed order to resolve its case against Townstone Financial for discriminatory lending practices and redlining African American neighborhoods in Chicago. If entered by the court, the proposed order would prohibit Townstone from taking any actions that violate the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and require it to pay a $105,000 penalty to the CFPB’s victims relief fund. The action follows lengthy contested litigation and a unanimous July 2024 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit that the ECOA prohibits lenders from discouraging prospective applicants on a prohibited basis from applying for loans.

Townstone was a nonbank retail-mortgage creditor and broker based in Chicago through 2018. Some 90% of Townstone’s mortgage lending was in the Chicago metro. From 2014-2017, Townstone was in the top 10% of lenders in applications from the Chicago metro, receiving an average of 740 mortgage loan applications annually. Townstone ended mortgage lending in 2018 during the CFPB’s investigation, and is now solely a mortgage broker. 

In 2020, the CFPB sued Townstone for discouraging potential applicants because of their race or the racial composition of where they lived or sought to live. Townstone’s advertising, marketing, and business practices discouraged African Americans from applying for credit and actively avoided the credit needs of African American applicants and African American neighborhoods in the Chicago metro.

Townstone drew only five or six applications a year for properties in neighborhoods that were more than 80% African American, despite those neighborhoods being nearly 14% of census tracts in the Chicago metro, and over half of the applications it did draw were from white applicants. From 2014-2017, barely 2% of Townstone’s mortgage-loan applications were for properties in majority African American neighborhoods, even though they make up nearly 19% of the Chicago metro’s census tracts.

Under the Consumer Financial Protection Act, the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions violating consumer-financial protection laws, including the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Consumer Financial Protection Act. If entered by the court, the proposed order would require Townstone to pay a $105,000 penalty, which will be deposited into the CFPB’s victims relief fund. If Townstone violates the ECOA again, it could find itself in contempt of the court order and face further sanctions.

Read the proposed order.

Read the November 1, 2024 CFPB press release.


Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Lily Ebert, Who Kept Holocaust Memory Alive on TikTok, 100

Ebert, a Hungarian-born Auschwitz survivor who devoted herself to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, including on TikTok, where she drew millions of viewers with her testimonials. She also wrote a best-selling memoir, Lily’s Promise.

The title of Ebert’s book referenced a pledge that she made to herself on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, as a 20-year-old prisoner at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland, in 1944. Her mother and her two youngest siblings had been sent directly to the gas chamber. Beneath the heavy smoke from the crematorium, Ebert vowed that she would “tell the world what had happened” not only to her “but to all the people who could not tell their stories.”

Ebert spoke to students, to historians, to politicians, and to journalists. In February 2021, her TikTok account started and it made her an unexpected social media celebrity. In one video, she showed the tattoo branded on her arm upon her arrival at Auschwitz, number A-10572. The TikTok account attracted 2 million followers. In 2023, Ebert was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire by King Charles III in recognition of her efforts to educate the public about the Holocaust. 

In Auschwitz, she wrote, “a pall hung over everything, blocking out the sun. The foul smell that had choked us on our arrival, the most sickening and overwhelming smell I had ever experienced, was getting stronger and stronger. Not far away was a tall chimney, smoking furiously, with flames emerging red and bright.” “What kind of factory is that?” she asked another prisoner. “What are they making here? What’s this horrible smell?” “They’re burning your families there,” the woman replied. “Your parents, your sisters, your brothers. They’re burning them.”

After Ebert’s death, King Charles offered his condolences, as did British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In a statement recalling Ebert’s vow to speak of what she had witnessed, Starmer said that she had kept her promise “in the most remarkable way,” and that now “we must keep our promise to her” by carrying forward the memory of the Holocaust.

Image Credit: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Read the October 11, 2024 Washington Post article.

Thelma Jean Mothershed Wair, One of the Little Rock Nine, 83.

Thelma Jean Mothershed Wair was a member of the Little Rock Nine, the African-American students involved in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The world watched as they braved constant intimidation and threats from those who opposed desegregation of the formerly all-white high school. Mothershed was a junior when she entered Central. Despite the fact that she had a cardiac condition since birth, she had a near perfect record for attendance.

Mothershed attended Dunbar Junior High School and Horace Mann High School before transferring to Central High. Despite daily tormenting from some white students at Central High, she completed her junior year at the formerly all-white high school during the 1957-58 year. The students who integrated Central High School were known as the Little Rock Nine.

For three weeks in September 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to block the Black students from enrolling in Central High. This was three years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated classrooms were unconstitutional. In response to Faubus' actions, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent members of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to escort the students into school on September 25, 1957.

Because the city’s high schools were closed the following year, Mothershed earned the necessary credits for graduation through correspondence courses and by attending summer school in St. Louis, Missouri. She received her diploma from Central High by mail. Mothershed graduated from Southern Illinois University at Cabondale in 1964 with a BA in home economics and earned her MS in Guidance and Counseling Education in 1970; in 1985, she received an administrative certificate in education from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. She taught home economics in the East St. Louis school system for twenty-eight years.

Mothershed Wair also worked at the Juvenile Detention Center of the St. Clair County Jail in St. Clair County, Illinois, and as an instructor of survival skills for women at the American Red Cross Shelter for the homeless. During the 1989-90 school year, the East St. Louis chapter of the Top Ladies of Distinction and the early childhood/pre-kindergarten staff of District 189 honored her as an Outstanding Role Model.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) awarded her and the other Little Rock Nine, along with Daisy Bates, the prestigious Spingarn Medal in 1958. In 1999, President Bill Clinton presented the nation’s highest civilian award, the Congressional Gold Medal, to the members of the Little Rock Nine.

Image Credit: Office of U.S. Rep Vic Snyder (D-Arkansas), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Read the October 28, 2024 Encyclopedia of Arkansas article.

Read the October 21, 2024 Associated Press (AP) article.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Elderly- or Disabled-Headed Households are Now the Most Common Housing Choice Voucher Program Households

A new HUD Office of Policy Development and Research study found that as of 2020, families with children no longer represented the most common type of tenant-based rental assistance - Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) - households. Elderly- or disabled-headed households are now the most common HCV household structure.

HUD began providing tenant-based rental assistance following the passage of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974. For the first time, low-income households were able to use their assistance to seek rental housing in the private market. By the 1970s, observers realized that the spatial concentration of poverty was negatively impacting those the program sought to help. The current HCV program tries to have these assisted households live in higher-opportunity neighborhoods rather than areas of concentrated poverty, where many public housing developments were and still are located.

A HUD report comparing nationwide trends in 2010 to those in the top 50 MSAs in 2000 found that although the HCV program had a small share of affordable rental housing, the share of households living in high-poverty areas was increasing. It also found that the share of HCV households living in HCV-dense census tracts had increased during 2000-2010. Both reports found that participant choice alone was not enough to achieve spatial poverty de-concentration.

The just-released third HCV location report covering 2010 and 2020 found that:

(1) The number of HCV households with an elderly or disabled head of household exceeded the number of HCV households with children. During 2010-2020, the number of elderly heads of households increased by nearly 10% and the number of disabled heads of households decreased slightly. Non-Hispanic Black heads of households continue to represent the largest - and growing - racial/ethnic group of HCV households.

(2) The share of HCV households living in neighborhoods with a high density of voucher holders increased 2010-2020; and 

(3) A large share of HCV households still live in high-poverty neighborhoods. Nationwide, 44% of tenant-based voucher (TBV) households still lived in high-poverty census tracts in 2020, including 7% living in areas of extreme poverty

(4) There are significant racial and ethnic disparities among voucher households regarding neighborhood poverty rates: Black (52.3%) and Hispanic (47.8%) HCV households were more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of poverty compared to their white peers (30.7%). Black and Hispanic HCV households were also twice as likely to live in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of other voucher holders, where more than 10% of units were occupied by voucher holders, compared to white HCV households.

Read the October 29, 2024 HUD Report.

Read the September 16, 2024 National Low Income Housing Coalition article.

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Teaching for Change has Released the Second Edition of Its "Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching"

Teaching for Change has released the second edition of Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching, an important teaching tool originally published jointly with the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) in 2004. Edited by Deborah Menkart, Alana D. Murray, and Jenice L. View, Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching is used in school districts and with community groups across the country.

The 2nd edition of the 576-page book is $29.95. Order

The Civil Rights Movement is one of the most commonly taught stories about the fight for democracy and equal rights. However, the powerful stories of everyday people organizing and working together for social change are lost in the focus on a few major heroes and dates. The book and its companion website offer a collection of lessons, essays, articles, primary documents, and poetry to help K-12 educators delve more deeply than a "heroes and holidays" approach to teaching about the Civil Rights Movement in their classrooms. The book's focus is on the themes of women, youth, organizing, culture, institutional racism, and the interconnectedness between social movements. The resources are organized in eight sections: Critiquing the Traditional Narrative, Framing the Movement, Desegregation of Public Spaces, Voting Rights, Black Power, Labor and Land, Transnational Solidarity, and Student Engagement.

There will be a book release event on Wednesday, October 30th in Washington, D.C. at the Busboys and Poets in Brookland (telephone 202-636-7230 625 Monroe St NE, Washington, DC 20017). Presenters include the editors (Jenice L. View, Alana D. Murray, and Deborah Menkart), SNCC veterans (Courtland Cox, Judy Richardson, and Jennifer Lawson), and lesson authors. Educator Jessica Rucker is the emcee. Attendees will hear about the book and engage in some of the activities. Free and open to the public. Books available for purchase and signing. The first 20 classroom teachers in attendance will receive a free copy of the book.

Go to the book's webpage.

Fannie Mae Improves and Extends its "Expanded Housing Choice" Voucher Initiative Nationwide

 

Fannie Mae (FNMA/OTCQB) has announced improvements to its Expanded Housing Choice (EHC) initiative that: (1) make it available nationwide - including states with no source of income protections - for new loans to multifamily property owners who accept U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs); (2) increase eligibility thresholds to stimulate a more sustainable program; (3) streamline its data collection process; and (4) make its more transparent regarding inclusive renter screening requirements.  It was previously limited to eligible properties in North Carolina and Texas. These changes will support a more equitable housing market.

The Housing Choice Voucher federal program helps very-low-income families, senior citizens, and people with disabilities afford stable, quality housing in the private market. Fannie Mae’s Expanded Housing Choice initiative, begun in 2022 and extended through April 2026, is a pilot initiative to expand housing opportunities for HCV holders by incentivizing multifamily borrowers to accept vouchers as a valid source of income. Approximately 30% of voucher holders are unable to find housing that accepts their vouchers.

Multifamily property owners are now eligible if their property is not already legally required to accept HCVs and that at least 40% of units are affordable at or below HUD Fair Market Rents or Small Area Fair Market Rents. Borrowers and property managers who leverage EHC and accept HCVs can benefit from lower pricing, flexible loan terms, certain completion, lower turnover and vacancy rates, and a steady stream of competitive rent payments backed by HUD.  Fannie Mae's Delegated Underwriting and Servicing (DUS®) lenders partnered with it in the initiative.

For more information on Fannie Mae’s Expanded Housing Choice initiative, including background on the Housing Choice Voucher program, lender and borrower best practices, frequently asked questions, and more resources, go to FannieMae.com.

Read the October 15, 2024 Fannie Mae press release.

Friday, October 18, 2024

Citadel FCU Redlining Settlement Proves It’s Time To Bring Credit Unions Under Community Reinvestment Act Enforcement

The recent U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) law enforcement settlement with Citadel Federal Credit Union is excellent evidence why the Community Reinvestment Act’s (CRA) omission of credit unions from its rules is a mistake, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC). Citadel FCU agreed to a $6.5 million settlement regarding its alleged discouragement of homebuyers in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods of Philadelphia from applying for mortgages and systematically declined to make mortgages in those neighborhoods. Citadel maintains its innocence in the settlement.

“It no longer makes sense to let credit unions out of the common-sense obligations that CRA puts on traditional banks. Citadel’s alleged conduct in the case it just paid $6.5 million to settle is a timely demonstration of the problem and the need to enhance fair lending protections for credit union customers. Despite their public perception as a gentler, kinder, more community-minded provider of retail banking services, credit unions are just as capable of violating borrowers’ civil rights as any other financial institution. Whatever the driving causes underlying such violations, we know how to fix the problem: Supervise credit unions under CRA so that they can prove their actual actions live up to their public image.”

Such failures and business practices are commonly uncovered in traditional banking through regular federal CRA examinations, which are conducted every few years. Extending CRA to cover credit unions would both improve oversight and put new capital into neglected communities as the firms move into compliance with the law’s requirements. Bringing credit unions under CRA would ensure that they face an affirmative and binding obligation to those same people and communities.

Read the October 15, 2024 NCRC article.