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Showing posts with label blacks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blacks. Show all posts
Thursday, April 27, 2023
Friday, February 24, 2023
Mortgage Inequities
New Research Finds Black Seniors are Disproportionately Denied Mortgage-Based Loans
Many seniors have built up considerable wealth in their homes. Some 78% of 65-to-74-year-olds own their homes, as do 82% of those 75 and older. As of 2019, 47% of homeowners’ median net worth was in their home equity: 58% percent for Hispanic homeowners and 59% for Black homeowners.
The Urban Institute's just-released research report found that the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) option tapping home equity could financially help Black senior homeowners, but they are disproportionately denied access at every age and income level. Black HECM applicants experience higher denial rates than white applicants for all age groups, and this denial gap persists at all loan amount levels across all neighborhood incomes.
Using 2021 HMDA data, it was found that the denial rate for Black HECM applicants is the highest across all age groups: 21.5% of Black applicants ages 62 to 74 are denied, compared with 12.0% for white applicants. The overall denial rates for applicants over 75 decrease for white, Black, and Hispanic borrowers, but the Black-white denial gap persists and is 6.9 percentage points.
Regarding loan amount and neighborhood income, Black applicants persistently experience higher denial rates. For Black applicants with loan amounts under $100,000, 36.4% living in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods are denied HECMs, compared with 19.5% of white applicants. This gap continues even for those living in upper-income neighborhoods: 14.7% of Black applicants with $200,000-$300,000 loan amounts are denied, compared with 9.3% of white applicants. Another study (Lindsey-Taliefero and Kelly, 2021), using 2019 HMDA data had consistent findings that Black applicants are more likely to be denied a reverse mortgage after controlling for age, gender, and income.
One reason Black applicants have higher denial rates could be financial precarity associated with limited liquid wealth and postretirement income. In 2021, 33.8% of Black HECM applicants were denied because of insufficient cash. The median liquid net worth for Black homeowners over 62 is only $3,500, compared with $104,000 for white homeowners. Only 29.3% of Black homeowners over 62 have individual retirement accounts compared to white homeowners' 54.8%. Although HECMs provide flexible payment plans, they have high up-front costs and high annual mortgage insurance premiums (MIPs). The average Black applicant cannot afford these up-front costs. For a Black homeowner HECM applicant with a median value of $125,000, the 2% up-front MIPs plus the costs for home appraisal and counseling requires the applicant to pay at least $3,175 at closing, excluding other costs such as the annual MIPs and third-party charges. But the median liquid net wealth owned by a Black senior homeowner is only $3,500. For a white owning a home with a $220,000 median value, this cost structure incurs $5,075 in the first year, far less than the $104,000 median liquid wealth of white senior homeowners.
Another reason for the higher denial rates is that Black senior homeowners have much less housing wealth in late life than white senior homeowners. Among Black applicants over 62, 25.0% of all denials are because of insufficient collateral. Research shows that Black homeowners are more likely than white homeowners to have mortgage debt, even in late life. This mortgage burden limits the amount of collateral value Black households could tap to qualify for a HECM.
Because Black borrowers tend to have low incomes and low credit scores attributable to structural barriers and historic discrimination, the financial assessment further decreases the amount of home equity Black senior homeowners can borrow, making them less likely to tap home equity and less likely to get approved for a HECM loan.
The report sums that homeowners of color are disproportionately "denied for these loans because of decades of historical and structural racism in our financial system. Structural barriers in the mortgage finance system make it less likely for Black homeowners to refinance when interest rates are low, which increases their debt burden over time (Gerardi, Willen, and Zhang 2023). In addition, Black people are disproportionately likely to have thin or no credit files, increasing the likelihood of escrowing future property tax and insurance payments required in the financial assessment, which, in turn, limits the amount of home equity they can borrow."
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Read the February 23, 2023 Urban Institute research brief.
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Book Review
Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation
by Linda Villarosa. Doubleday: 2022. 288 pages. $30.00, hardcover.
From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the newspaper's 1619 Project*, this book discusses the extent of racial health disparities in the U.S., showing the toll racism takes on individuals and the nation's health. It is a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year. Oprah Daily calls it: "A stunning exposé of why Black people in our society 'live sicker and die quicker'—an eye-opening game changer."
Linda Villarosa's 2018 New York Times Magazine article on the poor maternal and infant mortality of black mothers and babies was important because it showed that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education. Many studies had previously linked racial discrimination and Black Americans' health, but this one revealed the extent of the problem.
This book examines the forces in the American health-care system and in society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to whites. For example, many of today's medical texts and instruments still assume that Black bodies are basically different from white bodies.
This book personalizes and adds to the many studies that have documented that there is worse medical treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Because of housing discrimination and income, Blacks live in dirtier, more polluted communities - and contribute to the problems that need solution.
* The 1619 Project is "an ongoing initiative from the New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative."
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
STUDY FINDS PERSISTENT BIAS AGAINST NON-WHITE RENTERS
Landlords Are Less Likely to Reply to Applicants with Black and Latino Names
A recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study found that landlords are less likely to respond to applicants with African American and Latino sounding names when renting properties. This solidifies and contributes to rising residential segregation.
In the largest study of rental discrimination, fictitious renters with names more often associated with White, African American, or Hispanic identities, were used. The research tracked over 25,000 interactions between those people and 8,476 property managers in 50 of the largest U.S. cities. Renters with White-sounding name received a 60% response rate, compared to a 54% and 57% response rate for those with African American and Hispanic identities. “African American and Hispanic/LatinX renters continue to face discriminatory constraints in the majority of U.S. cities,” the study said.
Along with other discriminatory practices, housing discrimination against renters of color leads to segregated neighborhoods in both homogenous and diverse cities. When Black or Latino children are raised in what are known as “opportunity neighborhoods” (i.e., areas that are mostly White and have good schools) they earn more later in maturity than those raied in segregated neighborhoods of color.
Other research have documented similar trends in the buyer’s market. Research has found that appraisers consistently undervalue homes in Black and Latino neighborhoods. In the NBER analysis, it was found that a lack of a response to a renter of color decreased the likelihood that someone of that ethnic group would live in a property by around 17%. The most discrimination for Black renters was identified in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Louisville. Latinos in Louisville, Houston, and Providence, Rhode Island, faced the strongest constraints, according to a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
Read the research report Racial Discrimination and Housing Outcomes in the United States Rental Market.
Article source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-29/landlords-are-less-likely-to-reply-to-black-latino-names#xj4y7vzkg
Monday, June 20, 2022
HAPPY JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION DAY!
Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19th of every year since 2021. The Federal holiday this year is June 20th.
President Biden signed the holiday into federal law as the the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act on June 17, 2021 - the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was added in 1983. In accord with other federal holidays, banks, schools and government companies (like post offices) will be closed. Since Juneteenth falls on a Sunday in 2022, workers in states that recognize the holiday have Monday, June 20, off of work, though some will observed it on Friday the 17th.
Since then, only 24 states, and the District of Columbia, have passed legislation or issued executive orders that provide funding to let state employees observe the day as a paid state holiday, according to the Pew Research Center. They are: Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.According to the New York Times, Appropriately, Texas was the first state in the U.S. to make Juneteenth a paid day off in 1980.
Juneteenth is extremely important because its commemoration marks the legal end of slavery in the U.S. achieved by the Union's victory in the Civil War. Specifically, Juneteenth commemorates when Union General Gordon Granger (and 2,000 troops) arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, on June 19, 1865, when Granger read a federal order telling the 250,000 enslaved African Americans in Texas that they were legally free by Executive Order after the Civil War had ended. Therefore, General Granger’s announcement put into effect the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued more than two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln, on January 1, 1863. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in areas under Confederate control. In the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be legally free until Juneteenth.
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution added the abolishment of slavery to the Constitution was passed by Congress in January 1865, but was not ratified and adopted until December 1865.
Juneteenth has been commemorated by African Americans since the late 1800s. As of today, all 50 states have recognized Juneteenth by enacting some type of celebratory proclamation. The holiday is also called “Juneteenth Independence Day,” “Freedom Day” or “Emancipation Day.”
Some traditional ways to celebrate Juneteenth are rodeos, fishing, barbecuing, baseball, a prayer service, speaker series, reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, and dances. Some practical ways to celebrate in 20922 also include: order food from a Black-owned restaurant; support the Black Lives Matter movement and antiracism work; educate yourself and reflect; spend the day reading about Juneteenth's history; watch the documentary 13th on Netflix or other movies, shows, books and podcasts about real-world, present-day issues; watch online Juneteenth events; put a sign in your front yard; and/or celebrate with a barbecue or family meal.
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Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/us/juneteenth-states-paid-holiday.html?.
https://www.cnet.com/culture/juneteenth-2022-the-history-of-the-holiday-and-how-to-celebrate-today/
Friday, June 17, 2022
MARYLAND CIVIL RIGHTS GALA ON AUGUST 20TH!
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Tuesday, March 8, 2022
Book Review
The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives
by Adolph L. Reed, Jr.
Verso, 2022. 160 pages, $24.95 hardcover.
This is an interesting narrative account of the South's long history of Jim Crow as people actually experienced it. This is important to relate because the last generation of Americans with a living memory of Jim Crow will soon pass on. The Jim Crow era's segregation order was complex and an apartheid system. This book uses first-hand individual stories and analysis to illuminate its legal framework, systems of power, and the way these systems structured the daily interactions, lives, and fates of ordinary working people. Reed's book includes a foreword from Barbara Fields, co-author of the excellent Racecraft:The Soul of Inequality in American Life (Verso, 2014) - which also is reviewed in this Blog.
The author Adolph Reed Jr. is a leading scholar of race, American politics, and inequality. Reed is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and has held positions at Yale, Northwestern, and the New School. He is a lifelong organizer and public intellectual, a contributing editor at The New Republic, and a frequent contributor to Harpers and The Nation.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
"A Nation Under Our Feet" Highlights Black Political Struggles
Book Review of A Nation Under Our Feet
Have you ever read this one? A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration by Steven Hahn (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2005) won the Pulitzer Prize in history when it was published, and deservedly so. It chronicles the various, long, difficult struggles for political, social, and economic equality for blacks in the rural South. One interesting finding is that slave associations (kinship, work, religion) were very strong, and plantation life was the beginning of black political movement. Recommended.
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