A new study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), entitled Decades of Disinvestment: Historic Redlining and Mortgage Lending Since 1981 (May 2024), has found that lenders "continue to reinforce patterns of structural racism in formerly redlined neighborhoods, regardless of local market dynamics. Fifty-five years after Congress outlawed using discriminatory maps to guide mortgage lending, race-based exclusion from homeownership is still a de facto reality."
To enable policymakers and analysts to definitively and precisely connect present-day conditions to past structural discrimination, the NCRC developed a new HMDA Longitudinal Dataset (HLD). It was created to utilize in this report and correct data deficiencies that have blocked our complete understanding of redlining for decades.
The NCRC urges because of these findings the need to implement and firmly enforce better-designed policy measures aimed at mitigating the impact of redlining and addressing residential segregation. Recent improvements to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), and the long-awaited Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rules - yet to be finalized by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) - are important steps to combat the impact of redlining and lessen residential segregation in communities. However, they may not be sufficient, given the stickiness of redlining’s legacy over the half century since the Fair Housing Act (FHA) became law.
