On Our Radar

American Banker, August 17, 2023, In Debate Over Appraisal Bias, Rival Researchers Clash Over Key Data Conflicting findings from a pair of non-profit research groups call into question whether or not recent actions will improve financial outcomes for minority homeowners without leading to banks and other mortgage lenders taking on undue risks. The debate centers on a 2018 report …

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The New York Times, August 21, 2023, Supreme Court Is Asked to Hear a New Admissions Case on Race The Thomas Jefferson case arose in late 2020, after protests over the murder of George Floyd. Officials in Fairfax County, Va., concerned about the few Black and Hispanic students at Thomas Jefferson, changed admissions standards. In …

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Vox, August 21, 2023, How Housing Activists And Unions Found Common Ground In California Corey Smith, the new head of the YIMBY-aligned Housing Action Coalition, told Vox he thinks the leadership from The California Conference of Carpenters, and bringing in the other unions, “is perhaps the single most positive shift in California housing discourse, conversations, …

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APNews, August 18, 2023, In Hawaii, Concerns Over ‘Climate Gentrification’ Rise After Devastating Maui Fires More than 3,000 buildings in Lahaina were damaged by fire, smoke or both. Insured property losses alone already total some $3.2 billion, according to Karen Clark & Company, a prominent disaster and risk modeling firm. With a housing crisis that has priced out many Native …

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American Banker, August 14, 2023, After Merger Fails, TD Inks Smaller Community Plan In New Jersey TD Bank is committing over $2 billion to community reinvestment initiatives in New Jersey — three months after the unraveling of a larger, multistate agreement that was tied to its ill-fated acquisition of First Horizon. Under a three-year plan unveiled Monday, the Canadian-owned …

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The New York Times, August 11, 2023, Gen Z Can’t Afford the Rent But there’s something that many Gen Z-ers feel is not within their realm of possibility: owning a home. The rule of thumb that one’s cost of housing shouldn’t exceed 30 percent of their monthly income is becoming less realistic for many in …

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The Washington Post, August 12, 2023, ‘Unluckiest generation’ falters in boomer-dominated market for homes Homeownership — the main driver of wealth for most Americans — is out of reach for large swaths of the population. But the pinch is most pronounced for millennials, who are buying homes at a slower pace than those before them. …

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Bloomberg, August 9, 2023, First American City to Tame Inflation Owes Its Success to Affordable Housing In May, the Twin Cities became the first major metropolitan area to see annual inflation fall below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. Its 1.8% pace of price increases was the lowest of any region that month. That’s largely …

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Fortune, August 8, 2023, Group behind affirmative action cases sues venture fund backing Black female founders for racial bias, a potential precursor to attacks on corporate DEI Last week, a conservative activist group behind the Supreme Court case that limited affirmative action in higher education sued early-stage venture capital fund Fearless Fund for racial discrimination. Atlanta-based Fearless …

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Insider, August 7, 2023, America, take note: New Zealand has figured out a simple way to bring down home prices Home prices in Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, doubled between 2009 and 2016 and prices across the rest of the country followed close behind. People even began to pay hundreds of dollars a month to rent garages in …

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Washington Post, July 28, 2023, Nearly 4 million in U.S. cut from Medicaid, most for paperwork reasons Beneficiaries typically must renew Medicaid every year, but that stopped in 2020 when the coronavirus arrived. With no one leaving the program, the number of Americans on Medicaid swelled to 85 million by this April, when the unwinding …

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Yahoo! Finance, July 28, 2023, Missing Out on the Generational Wealth Transfer: Nearly Half of Americans Don’t Expect To Inherit Anything A study published in 2019 by the Fed Board found that the median wealth families can expect from a generational transfer varied by race and ethnicity, prompting the phrase, “racial wealth gap.” Most minority …

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American Banker, July 28, 2023, Banks reduce exposure to climate-sensitive industries: New York Fed Last year, average bank exposure to companies that would be harmed in the event of an extreme climate-related shock was about 14% of total assets, down from 16% in 2020 and close to 18% in 2012. In recent years, shareholders and …

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CNBC, July 27, 2023, Regulators unveil sweeping changes to capital rules for banks with $100 billion or more in assets U.S. regulators unveiled a sweeping set of proposed changes to banks’ capital requirements to address evolving international standards and the recent regional banking crisis. The changes, designed to boost the accuracy and consistency of regulation, will revise …

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