Speaker 1: It's the big take from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm West Cassova today. Whatever happened to that big promise
Speaker 1: banks made to help black Americans buy homes one big
Speaker 1: contributor to the persistent wealth gap between black and white Americans.
Speaker 1: White families are far more likely than black families to
Speaker 1: own the home they live in. That, of course, is
Speaker 1: part of the long legacy of all kinds of racism
Speaker 1: and discrimination and employment the real estate market, and in
Speaker 1: decisions by banks about who they'll lend money to for
Speaker 1: a mortgage. You might remember a few years ago some
Speaker 1: of the country's biggest banks, Wells, Fargo, Bank of Americus
Speaker 1: and others, pledged to do something about that. They said
Speaker 1: they'd work hard to dramatically increase the number of mortgages
Speaker 1: they extend to black homebuyers. So how did that work out?
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Senior economics writer Shawn dunne and set out to
Speaker 1: answer that question, and he's here with me now with Answers. Sean.
Speaker 1: Good to talk to you again. Wonderful to be here, Sean.
Speaker 1: The last time we talked on this show, you were
Speaker 1: explaining the importance of home ownership to getting into the
Speaker 1: middle class and staying there. And now you're in our
Speaker 1: colleague and CHOI have written a big investigation that shows
Speaker 1: how difficult that can be and how sometimes that cards
Speaker 1: are stacked against people, especially Black Americans. Can you describe
Speaker 1: what she set out to find? What we set out
Speaker 1: to look at was some big promises that the three
Speaker 1: biggest banks in the mortgage market in America had made
Speaker 1: to increase black homeownership. And the biggest of those promises
Speaker 1: was one made by Wells Fargo in when it promised
Speaker 1: to lend sixty billion dollars over the next decade to
Speaker 1: create two hundred and fifty thousand new black homeowners in America.
Speaker 1: What we found when we looked at the data was
Speaker 1: that in every year since Wells Fargo had actually originated
Speaker 1: fewer mortgages to black home buyers than it did the
Speaker 1: year before, and that in one it actually underwrote fewer
Speaker 1: mortgages to black home buyers than it did in seventeen,
Speaker 1: the year that it made that promise. Now Wells Fargo
Speaker 1: isn't alone in making these big promises. JP Morgan promised
Speaker 1: in twenty to create forty thousand new Black and Latino
Speaker 1: homeowners in America. Bank of America has made some similar
Speaker 1: big promises in terms of two separate fifteen billion dollar
Speaker 1: programs to help increase minority home ownership. They announced in
Speaker 1: August of this year that they were going to provide
Speaker 1: zero down mortgages in black minority communities in five cities
Speaker 1: in America as part of test program, again to try
Speaker 1: and increase black home ownership. But those banks are all
Speaker 1: lending far less to black home buyers than they did
Speaker 1: a decade ago, or then they did more importantly at
Speaker 1: the peak in two thousand and seven on the cusp
Speaker 1: of the suppreme crisis. Today in America, those three banks
Speaker 1: originate fifty thousand were almost fifty thousand fewer mortgages each
Speaker 1: year to black home buyers than they did fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: And we looked at something called the Home Mortgage Disclosure
Speaker 1: Act data, which is every mortgage in America gets recorded
Speaker 1: and reported by the government anonymously. And what we zeroed
Speaker 1: in on is the role of the big three banks,
Speaker 1: the biggest bank lenders in the mortgage market, and that's Wells, Fargo, JP, Morgan,
Speaker 1: and Bank of America, and how that had changed in
Speaker 1: the last fifteen years. So despite the alledged to increase
Speaker 1: the number of black homeowners by issuing more mortgages to
Speaker 1: black families seeking to buy homes. The numbers have actually
Speaker 1: gone down, yeah, and to the point where in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, Wells Fargo originated just thirty seven mortgages across
Speaker 1: the country to black homebuyers, and had they stuck with
Speaker 1: the goal, then it would have been it would have
Speaker 1: been twenty five thousand. Yet, and some of those would
Speaker 1: be mortgages that they bought from other lenders and so on.
Speaker 1: There's other ways of doing it. But the point is
Speaker 1: the lending that their loan officers has been doing to
Speaker 1: black homebuyers is actually down from the time they made
Speaker 1: this big pledge. And it's a pledge that wasn't a
Speaker 1: kind of one time thing. It's something that they have
Speaker 1: repeated in their social progress reports as recently a September
Speaker 1: of this year, and it was a big, sixty billion
Speaker 1: dollar commitment that they were making and that they've continued
Speaker 1: to repeat. And what they don't tell you is that
Speaker 1: actually their business reality is that lending to black homebuyers
Speaker 1: has gone in the opposite direction. So they're continuing to
Speaker 1: say that this is something that they're doing, except the
Speaker 1: number is sort of show otherwise. So I guess the
Speaker 1: question is why why have the numbers gone down despite
Speaker 1: very prominent pledges to increase the numbers. Look, it's something
Speaker 1: that wells. Fargo, when we asked them this question, simply
Speaker 1: gave us a statement saying that they remain committed to
Speaker 1: increasing black home ownership in America and pointing to wider
Speaker 1: economic and social problems in America and laying the blame elsewhere.
Speaker 1: And JP Morgan and Bank of America both say they
Speaker 1: remain committed to their own goals, but that it just
Speaker 1: may take more time to meet them. Sean, your story
Speaker 1: focuses on one city block in Baltimore, which is emblematic
Speaker 1: of the things you're describing there. Absolutely, So we set
Speaker 1: out to look at where in America we could tell
Speaker 1: the story, and we settled on the block of Wallbrook
Speaker 1: Avenue in West Baltimore. The twenty one block of Wallbrook
Speaker 1: Avenue is really interesting and that it's a place that
Speaker 1: has a history of black homeownership. It's a block of
Speaker 1: row houses, It's part of a black working class neighborhood
Speaker 1: that has actually seen some serious disinvestment over the last
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty years. Sprinkled among these homes that are
Speaker 1: still kept up well, that have tidy front lawns, that
Speaker 1: have longtime black homeowners living in them, are vacant lots.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons for that is that, like
Speaker 1: a lot of neighborhoods in Baltimore, dominantly black neighborhods in Baltimore,
Speaker 1: the twenty block of Walbrook Avenue just saw an exit
Speaker 1: of bank lending. Effectively, it became almost impossible in recent
Speaker 1: years to get a mortgage from a major bank to
Speaker 1: buy a property in a lot of neighborhoods in Baltimore.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the people we talked to
Speaker 1: describes that as the cutting off of the capital artery
Speaker 1: to a lot of these communities. And that's something that
Speaker 1: has really been a legacy of the subprime crisis fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago. But it's there today, and it's there in
Speaker 1: the market, and it's been one of the things that
Speaker 1: has really dragged down, you know, back to that middle
Speaker 1: class dream of the wealth of the families that live
Speaker 1: on these blocks, the longtime homeowners there, their homes are
Speaker 1: not worth what they were fifteen years ago in some cases,
Speaker 1: and that's largely as a result of the withdrawal of
Speaker 1: bank capital from a lot of these neighborhoods. You talk
Speaker 1: about this bank withdrawal, and on this block in Baltimore,
Speaker 1: you see numerous examples of houses where the bank's essentially left.
Speaker 1: So we through the property records for each of the
Speaker 1: properties on the block. On the south side of the block,
Speaker 1: there are twenty three properties, but there's only one Wells
Speaker 1: Fargo mortgage left on the south side of the block.
Speaker 1: What happened. Some of this is the result of people
Speaker 1: paying off their mortgages, people moving, people sawing, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it is the result of foreclosures. And we
Speaker 1: started zeroing in on the story of one particular house,
Speaker 1: the house at three Wallbrook Avenue, and that's where we
Speaker 1: met the Jones family. The story that we're told by
Speaker 1: Terence Jones Jr. Who was in high school at the time,
Speaker 1: is that he came home from high school one afternoon
Speaker 1: and found his mother waiting outside. And his mother had
Speaker 1: been battling illness for a few years beforehand, and his
Speaker 1: father had as a result, been forced to cut back
Speaker 1: on his hours. They'd fallen behind on the mortgage. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a story that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: us can sympathize with. But as a result of falling behind,
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo foreclosed on the property and they lost their home.
Speaker 1: And the legacy is not just in this family being
Speaker 1: dislocated and losing their home, it's also in how Terrence
Speaker 1: Jones Jr. Now an adult who is now in his twenties,
Speaker 1: thinks about homeownership. And I think that's something that's really
Speaker 1: interesting when you think about the future and closing that
Speaker 1: wealth cap and getting younger people on the housing ladder.
Speaker 1: And you spoke to him, Uh, let's listen to what
Speaker 1: he had to say. You know, if a bank can
Speaker 1: be that heartless to families or hartness to a person,
Speaker 1: then you know, it just makes me don't even want
Speaker 1: to buy don't even want to buy a house, or
Speaker 1: I don't even wanna, you know, loan from the bank
Speaker 1: already just buy my house out on his own, because
Speaker 1: I don't kind of want to go through the same
Speaker 1: thing that my father went through and that my family
Speaker 1: went through with losing the house. It was just like
Speaker 1: kind of like a traumatic experience. When we come back
Speaker 1: my conversation with Sean Dinna continues, Sean we heard Tamas
Speaker 1: Jones talking about his experience when his family's home was
Speaker 1: sport closed down, and it wasn't an unusual thing to
Speaker 1: happen now, So the story of the Jones family house
Speaker 1: doesn't end with the family being kicked out after the
Speaker 1: family was foreclosed on. The father had taken out a
Speaker 1: sixty five dollar mortgage in two thousand and three and
Speaker 1: that was what he fell behind on, and ten years
Speaker 1: later they were kicked out of the house. A couple
Speaker 1: of years after they were kicked out of the house,
Speaker 1: well S Fargo sold the house for five dollars to
Speaker 1: an investor in Pennsylvania, who turned around and sold it
Speaker 1: a few months later for nine thousand dollars to another
Speaker 1: investor who then rehab the house and sold it last
Speaker 1: year late last year for almost ninety dollars. And you
Speaker 1: think about that, you talked to Terence Jones Jr. And
Speaker 1: what you see there is just the erosion of one
Speaker 1: family's wealth, the missed opportunities. That house is going to
Speaker 1: continue to appreciate as an asset in the years to come.
Speaker 1: And that is an appreciation and that's wealth that the
Speaker 1: Jones family is going to miss out them Sean you've
Speaker 1: said that the banks are saying market conditions and other
Speaker 1: forces beyond their control are largely responsible for their inability
Speaker 1: to meet the promise of lending to more Black Americans.
Speaker 1: What did you find when you talk about this with
Speaker 1: the banks, And the banks are incredibly sensitive about this issue.
Speaker 1: One of the things you run into very quickly is
Speaker 1: bankers blaming regulations and the regulatory environment and the crackdown
Speaker 1: that followed subprime crisis Great Recession. And we know that
Speaker 1: a large part of the story of the collapse of
Speaker 1: the housing market at that time was the kind of
Speaker 1: reckless lending practices that that happened beforehand by a lot
Speaker 1: of these same banks, and that they faced consequences afterwards
Speaker 1: for targeting minority neighborhoods. For you know, Baltimore was actually
Speaker 1: at the center of a series of lawsuits over reverse redlining,
Speaker 1: the actual targeting by Wells Fargo and other banks of
Speaker 1: black communities for high interest subprime loan and there was
Speaker 1: a huge settlement that was negotiated by the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice with Wells Fargo in and there were other banks
Speaker 1: that faced fines as a result. So the cost of
Speaker 1: getting it wrong, the kind of regulatory costs is one
Speaker 1: of the things that banks point to, and yet they
Speaker 1: made the pledge to increase lending once these regulations were
Speaker 1: in place, So it wasn't as though they changed the
Speaker 1: rules of the game afterwards. They went into it knowing
Speaker 1: that that's what the terms were. Absolutely, absolutely, And you know,
Speaker 1: as part of this reporting, we talked to a guy
Speaker 1: called Brad Blackwell, who was a senior executive at Wells
Speaker 1: Fargo at the time they came up with this goal,
Speaker 1: and he said, we saw a great opportunity in the
Speaker 1: black community in America, great business opportunity in terms of
Speaker 1: the population growth. It was also the reality is mortgages
Speaker 1: in the white community, the home ownership rates something like
Speaker 1: pretty saturated, but there's a growth opportunity in Latino and
Speaker 1: Black neighborhoods to get back into lending there. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: also a social responsibility that he talked about, and that
Speaker 1: has become this pledge from all of the banks has
Speaker 1: really become part of their social policy. The kind of
Speaker 1: E s G thing that we hear about. That's that environmental,
Speaker 1: social and governance is sort of being a better company
Speaker 1: by doing good. Yeah, it's corporate citizenship. So do you
Speaker 1: think that when they made these pledges at the time,
Speaker 1: they saw an opportunity to make it happen, that they
Speaker 1: did in good faith and then realized they'd made the
Speaker 1: wrong decision, or is this more of a social campaign
Speaker 1: from the start. Look, it's really hard to make that judgment,
Speaker 1: and I have to believe as a reporter that these
Speaker 1: were good faith pledges at the time, and the banks
Speaker 1: certainly laid out strategies to get there. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's a structural problem in the way the business is done.
Speaker 1: What can be done? Because you said two things. One,
Speaker 1: the banks are not meeting their pledge to increase the
Speaker 1: number of mortgages going to black home owners. And the
Speaker 1: second thing is that the banks themselves are not wanting
Speaker 1: to issue as many mortgages anyway because it's not such
Speaker 1: a good business as it used to be. Those two
Speaker 1: things together don't look like a great future for mortgages
Speaker 1: for people who are looking to get in the middle class. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and for the broader issue of closing the racial wealth
Speaker 1: gap in America. So what's taking its space? Because people
Speaker 1: still want to buy homes. People are still buying homes
Speaker 1: even now where interest rates are high. It's more difficult,
Speaker 1: but people want to buy home. So who's lending. So
Speaker 1: the biggest mortgage lenders in America today are non bank lenders.
Speaker 1: And these are outfits like Rocket Mortgage, which used to
Speaker 1: be Quicken and they're now the largest. They are now
Speaker 1: the largest mortgage lender in America. And just to give
Speaker 1: you an idea, they lent They originated more mortgages to
Speaker 1: black homebuyers in one than all three of the biggest
Speaker 1: banks combined. And so they know how to do this. Now,
Speaker 1: why let me just ask you, Like banks have been
Speaker 1: doing this for many, many years, it's obviously very profitable.
Speaker 1: Why is it that these other lenders are able to
Speaker 1: make a go of it in a way that we
Speaker 1: you know, seeming to be so profitable when the big
Speaker 1: banks can't do it well? I mean, part of it
Speaker 1: is convenience. You know, you can apply for a Rocket
Speaker 1: mortgage on your phone. There's that online lending side of things.
Speaker 1: But part of it is also intentional marketing to some
Speaker 1: of these communities that the Rocket Mortgages and others aren't
Speaker 1: doing that perhaps the banks aren't so sean as usual,
Speaker 1: You've done a great job is spelling out a big problem.
Speaker 1: Where's the bright spot here? If there is one, where
Speaker 1: is the solution? How does this get fixed? So there
Speaker 1: are some pretty obvious and fairly easy solutions to this,
Speaker 1: and one of the biggest ones that the people in
Speaker 1: the housing industry talk about is the positive sistants helping
Speaker 1: black home buyers come up with the deposit which is
Speaker 1: often the hardest thing for a family down payment on
Speaker 1: exactly the down payment on a mortgage, which can be
Speaker 1: anywhere from you know, three to of the cost of
Speaker 1: a house, because a lot of these families are paying
Speaker 1: rent right and they can afford the monthly payment because
Speaker 1: ranked is often more expensive than a mortgage, and yet
Speaker 1: you don't build anything exactly. It's just that entry point
Speaker 1: that they struggle with. And so there have been some
Speaker 1: efforts by the banks to get into this area, but
Speaker 1: they've been hidden miss But one of the big ones
Speaker 1: that Wells Fargo engaged in was created by a twenty
Speaker 1: twelve settlement with the Department of Justice in which they
Speaker 1: were asked to come up with fifty million dollars to
Speaker 1: do deposit assistance programs in eight cities, including Baltimore. One
Speaker 1: of the people we met was Nyamaka Odom who is
Speaker 1: twenty nine years old, and she bought a house in
Speaker 1: in East Baltimore and she was able to string to
Speaker 1: get a twenty nine thousand dollars in downpayment assistance. The
Speaker 1: biggest chunk of that was fifteen thousand dollars in a
Speaker 1: forgivable loan from Wells Fargo as part of this program,
Speaker 1: as part of this program, and it made all the difference,
Speaker 1: and she walked us through the process. I met with
Speaker 1: my real Churn. She was like, you know, there are
Speaker 1: downpayment assistance programs, you know, let me introduce you to
Speaker 1: um Broke her at bb and T at the time Naturists,
Speaker 1: and she told me, yes, you can get a lot
Speaker 1: of aid based on the income amount that you make
Speaker 1: because there's certain income caps for certain programs. And so
Speaker 1: she told me about the Community Block Development program in
Speaker 1: Baltimore that she told me about the Baltimore Neighborhood and
Speaker 1: then the other was through Federal Homebloan Bank. And so
Speaker 1: I ended up getting all of them, which is nice
Speaker 1: because the Baltimore Neighorhood lift one that was the last
Speaker 1: one I got, but it gave me fifteen thousand dollars um.
Speaker 1: The other programs of the Baltimore Community Block Program. That
Speaker 1: one I did have to do counseling force. I did
Speaker 1: online counseling talking about UM, the responsibilities of being a homeowner,
Speaker 1: what can happen foreclosure, and you know what to expect.
Speaker 1: And so I did that counseling virtually and then I
Speaker 1: did in person counseling UM. Once I got certified for that,
Speaker 1: then they provided me the five thousand dollars of the
Speaker 1: down payment assistance. So there's what looks like a success story,
Speaker 1: maybe a path for others. How many other people have
Speaker 1: access to that? Is that something that's scalable where let's
Speaker 1: say Wells Fargo really embrace this, would they be able
Speaker 1: to come closer to meeting this big public goal that
Speaker 1: they proposed. Absolutely, but it's something that comes and goes.
Speaker 1: So in Baltimore, over the last years, we were able
Speaker 1: to track down six hundred and eighty or so homeowners
Speaker 1: who received the assistance from Wells Fario, and we went
Speaker 1: through and looked at where that money went, and what
Speaker 1: we found was that only it roughly went into um
Speaker 1: majority black census tracks in Baltimore, and Baltimore is a
Speaker 1: majority black city. So it's the money and you hear
Speaker 1: this a lot from folks who work in the fair
Speaker 1: housing world and advocacy groups, and that is that you
Speaker 1: really need to target that lending. Sean, when you look
Speaker 1: down the road, do you see this gap closing? I
Speaker 1: think they're really sad and frustrating. Reality is that we're
Speaker 1: going to go backwards for a few years. And that's
Speaker 1: the consequence of economic policy in the United States. It's
Speaker 1: a consequence of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. Buying
Speaker 1: houses is more spensive. You know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: who could afford a mortgage a few years ago aren't
Speaker 1: going to be able to afford that. We are going
Speaker 1: to go through some turmoil. Just a number of people
Speaker 1: buying homes in the next few years is just gonna
Speaker 1: be down substantially. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: closing that gap, it's a numbers game. It's a volume game.
Speaker 1: You need to lend more to black home buyers so
Speaker 1: that more black home buyers can buy homes and that
Speaker 1: they are buying homes at a faster rate than the
Speaker 1: white population. And that gets into all sorts of other things,
Speaker 1: like how credit scores are assembled, like discrimination in terms
Speaker 1: of appraisals and black community. Is the willingness of banks
Speaker 1: to lend into some communities and places like the block
Speaker 1: of Walbrook Cabinet. This is not something that is going
Speaker 1: to be solved tomorrow. I'm not sure it's something that's
Speaker 1: going to be solved ten years from now. But it's
Speaker 1: something that you need the big banks in America to
Speaker 1: live up to their promises to do. Sean Donnan, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for coming on the show. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me. When we come back, we'll hear
Speaker 1: from someone who's working with banks and other lenders to
Speaker 1: try to do something about this problem. What more can
Speaker 1: be done to press lenders to narrow the home ownership gap.
Speaker 1: Diedrich Assanti Mohammed spends a lot of time working to
Speaker 1: make that happen. He's Chief of Membership Policy and Equity
Speaker 1: at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition here in Washington, and
Speaker 1: he joins me now. Diedrich Sante Mohammed, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for being here. Yes, thank you for having me. First,
Speaker 1: let me ask you, what does the National Community Reinvestment
Speaker 1: Coalition do well. We are an organization that really started
Speaker 1: off as a coalition around the Community Reinvestment Act and
Speaker 1: trying to make sure that the Community Reinvestment Act, you know,
Speaker 1: recognize that we don't need solely not discrimination, but we
Speaker 1: also needed to affirmatively further investment in housing by financial
Speaker 1: institutions and investment in general in order to help or
Speaker 1: move the country toward a more equitable society. And so
Speaker 1: we pull together this coalition that today has grown. We
Speaker 1: have over seven hundred local organizations across the country that
Speaker 1: do different type of community economic development work. We work
Speaker 1: with banks and trying to help them point to them
Speaker 1: promising practices, best practices of investment into load of moderate
Speaker 1: income areas and how to help address the racial wealth divide.
Speaker 1: And that can take a kind of a host of
Speaker 1: different programs and types of advocacy. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: we're talking about today, which is promises that a lot
Speaker 1: of the biggest banks, lenders from mortgages made to increase
Speaker 1: the number of black homeowners by extending more loans than
Speaker 1: they have historically, and how some of those promises have
Speaker 1: been broken. You authored a study that showed to boost
Speaker 1: black home ownership to over twenty years in the US
Speaker 1: would require a hundred and sixty five thousand mortgages a
Speaker 1: year above what was being lent out in Yes, that
Speaker 1: is correct, and we like to you know, know that's
Speaker 1: about increase. You know that we would look at for
Speaker 1: most financial institutions would need to do that in order
Speaker 1: to collectively get to this level. And you know, I think, well,
Speaker 1: the reason we wanted to put these types of numbers
Speaker 1: out there is want to highlight the kind of radical
Speaker 1: change necessary in order to get to what really is
Speaker 1: a humble goal, because the homeownership rate for white Americans
Speaker 1: is seventy three, seventy, so we're not even talking about
Speaker 1: get to equality with white Americans. We're just kind of
Speaker 1: trying to help highlight that for the last sixty or
Speaker 1: more years, African Americans have seen very little changes in
Speaker 1: home ownership rates, staying right around forty percent, and that
Speaker 1: we need to finally get the country going in the
Speaker 1: right direction, and it would take a real substantive, long
Speaker 1: term increase in order to get to this you know,
Speaker 1: clear strong majority of black home ownership level. We think
Speaker 1: it's necessary to address the racial wealth divide and racial
Speaker 1: economic and equality and what are the steps that need
Speaker 1: to be taken in order to meet that goal. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think most banks if any banks are going
Speaker 1: to increase their mortgage landing to African Americans by fifty
Speaker 1: next year. But I think what banks can do is
Speaker 1: recognize that we have to commit ourselves to increasing mortgage
Speaker 1: lending to African Americans by let's say five percent next year,
Speaker 1: and then try to do that five percent the year
Speaker 1: after that, and so we can start getting on the
Speaker 1: half of substantive change over time. I look not even
Speaker 1: at so much the whole kind of total numbers, because
Speaker 1: I understand the market goes up and down. How many
Speaker 1: loans are banks doing each year various Right now, we
Speaker 1: have a higher interest rate, that might be less overall lending,
Speaker 1: but the percentage of black loans, you know, you can
Speaker 1: focus on increasing that, whether in a very strong market
Speaker 1: or a weaker market. And so, you know, I look
Speaker 1: for that type of a step by step progress. We
Speaker 1: saw the big lenders make these very big public pledges
Speaker 1: a few years ago to do exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: What did you think when those pledges came out and
Speaker 1: how is it actually played out among the coalition that
Speaker 1: you're part of. Well, you know, for years I had
Speaker 1: been advocating and working with various organizations for finance institutions
Speaker 1: to recognize the reality of the racial wealth divide. Right,
Speaker 1: and NCRC has been working for years and many originations
Speaker 1: been working for years on increasing minority home ownership. So
Speaker 1: I was glad to see that financial institutions across the
Speaker 1: country we're coming forward and say that we are making
Speaker 1: pledges to address the racial wealth divide, the racial wealth gap.
Speaker 1: So that is good that they're on that page. They're
Speaker 1: recognizing that. I have some concerns that some of these
Speaker 1: pledges are overly broad, where you could say, you know,
Speaker 1: we're doing billions of dollars in order to bridge racial
Speaker 1: wealth divide, but not really clarifying, well, how much of
Speaker 1: that Let's say it's three billion dollars, how much of
Speaker 1: that lending were you already doing the previous years, Like
Speaker 1: how much of that is new lending additional lending? And
Speaker 1: also too, to be clear, this is lending, this is
Speaker 1: an investment in giving of new dollars in right, it's
Speaker 1: them actually selling their products. Are saying if they did
Speaker 1: two billion last year, they're gonna do three billion next year.
Speaker 1: They're saying, well, and we hope to sell an additional
Speaker 1: billion dollars of products. Oftentimes it gets tied into this
Speaker 1: philanthropic giving. So I think it's really it's important we're
Speaker 1: gonna make progress to be real specific about what is
Speaker 1: being offered, what is being homist, and what they hope
Speaker 1: to achieve in the next five to ten years. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a really important point you're making, is that you're
Speaker 1: not asking banks to give, you're asking banks just to
Speaker 1: sell their product. Yes, well, I mean I'm also asking
Speaker 1: banks to give fair Enough, we've been talking about banks,
Speaker 1: there are also non bank lenders that have started to
Speaker 1: move in offer loans that banks sometimes won't. How has
Speaker 1: that worked out? That's a growing important component that non
Speaker 1: banking companies are a larger and larger segment of those
Speaker 1: doing important mortgage lending and other types of lending. And
Speaker 1: you know, we are having more and more conversations with
Speaker 1: these other industries about, you know, what is your commitment
Speaker 1: to ensuring that the mortgage lending space, a small business
Speaker 1: lending space is something that serves all people, right, It's
Speaker 1: not something that we just think banks should do. Earlier
Speaker 1: in this episode, we heard from a young man named
Speaker 1: Terrence Jones Jr. In Baltimore whose family lost their home
Speaker 1: be because his dad had to cut back on work
Speaker 1: to become his wife's caretaker, and he now lacks the
Speaker 1: desire to buy a home of his own, fearing that
Speaker 1: he could lose everything. What do you say to a
Speaker 1: young man like that who lost faith in the ability
Speaker 1: to buy a home. I think what I would say
Speaker 1: to someone like that. I mean, one is first as
Speaker 1: important to recognize, you know, the challenge and the trauma
Speaker 1: of because it's a financial asset, but it's also something
Speaker 1: very personal, right, and it's something that you really do
Speaker 1: feel a loss, like if you lose a home and
Speaker 1: then you're going into rentorships, so you know, I think
Speaker 1: first important to recognize that loss um but also the
Speaker 1: economic benefits and even the kind of personal benefits of
Speaker 1: being able to own a home and be able to
Speaker 1: stay and I have to worry about rent changing every
Speaker 1: year or that they might not continue lease. But you
Speaker 1: have something that you can stay in and you know,
Speaker 1: and your kids can come back to. It's still something
Speaker 1: that probably would be beneficial for you. And trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what is the best type of a mortgage program,
Speaker 1: what is the best economic situation you can set yourself
Speaker 1: up in so that this can be as safe and
Speaker 1: secure for you as possible. I don't think in overall
Speaker 1: the challenges, African Americans don't have a desire for homeownership,
Speaker 1: you know. I think we see repeatedly that when there
Speaker 1: are opportunities, the African Americans are quick to jump in
Speaker 1: to the homeownership market. It's more about creating sustainable mortgage
Speaker 1: learning programs that can work considering the economic reality of
Speaker 1: African American Diedrich Cossante Mohammed, thanks for speaking with me
Speaker 1: today and I was great talking with you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: You can see Dietrich Cossante Mohammed's report on Black homeownership
Speaker 1: at NCRC dot org, and you can read Seawan Dunnan
Speaker 1: and and choice story about banks and Black homeowners at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for listening to us here at
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