On Our Radar

CFPB, June 26, 2024, Fair Lending Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 2023 This report describes our fair lending activities in enforcement, guidance and rulemaking, interagency coordination, and outreach and activities for calendar year 2023.

GBH, July 29, 2024, To Build Housing, Boston Gives Away Land Black And Brown Families Once Owned City officials say they are providing subsidies to mostly small, local and minority-owned builders to build income-restricted housing on these vacant lots. The builders will be required to employ Boston residents for the construction and make the units

The Washington Post, July 26, 2024, How Kamala Harris Is Tackling Medical Debt — With Roy Cooper’s Help While a record number of Americans now have health insurance, patient advocates warn that medical debt continues to be a source of financial distress. “Our estimates are that for someone in the U.S. who gets a new

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, June 26, 2024, Fair Lending Report Of The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 2023 In 2023, the CFPB announced public enforcement actions against two repeat offenders for reporting false, erroneous, or incorrect HMDA data: Freedom Mortgage Corporation (Freedom Mortgage) and Bank of America, N.A. The CFPB will continue to monitor the rate

Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2024, What Gives Poor Kids A Shot at Better Lives? Economists Find An Unexpected Answer For all our divisions, Americans have been united by a singular obsession: How can we have a better life? Economists call this economic mobility—the ability to move up the income ladder and make it to

American Prospect, July 26, 2024, The Corporate Wishcasting Attack On Lina Khan With all of that influence, Hoffman feels that gives him the right to dictate a potential future president’s regulatory policy. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said plainly that it’s “unacceptable” for a donor to use money to influence Harris’s personnel decisions. I probably don’t have to recount

NBC Bay Area, July 16, 2024, Oakland Opens 100% Affordable Housing Complex Officials in Oakland on Tuesday celebrated the opening of a 100% affordable housing project designed for low-income and formerly incarcerated residents. The apartment complex at 1670 Seventh St., called The Black Panther, will house ground-floor businesses, with the upper levels consisting of homes

Deseret News, July 29, 2024, Housing Market Sees Lower Costs, But Buyer Hesitancy Remains The country’s housing shortage took a hard hit in 2022, rising to a 4.5 million deficit. According to Zillow, “2023 was the strongest year for U.S. home completions since 2007, but 1.4 million additional homes aren’t enough to make a meaningful dent

AP News, August 8, 2024, Trump And Harris Agreed To Debate On Sept. 10: Highlights From Trump’s News Conference Former President Donald Trump held a news conference Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, in which he recommitted to debating Vice President Kamala Harris and taunted her. ABC News has confirmed that both the Harris and Trump campaigns have

Washington Post, August 5, 2024, More Americans Are Moving Into Flood And Fire Hot Spots Drawing on data from the Census Bureau and the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit that assesses climate risk, the Redfin analysis showed that the counties most exposed to floods and fires gained more population than they lost between July 2022

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, August 7, 2024, CFPB Report Finds Lenders Cramming Markup Fees And Confusing Terms Into Solar Energy Loans In conjunction with today’s report, the CFPB released a consumer advisory warning homeowners of the risky practices in the solar lending market and sharing advice for borrowers who encounter illegal activity. The U.S. Department of the

The Conversation, August 5, 2024, Racism And Discrimination Lead To Faster Aging Through Brain Network Changes, New Study Finds In our study of Black women, we found that more frequent racial discrimination was linked to more connectivity between two key regions. One, called the locus coeruleus, is a deep brain region that activates the stress response, promoting

E&E News, August 7, 2024, Former Geography Teacher Walz A ‘Self-Proclaimed GIS Nerd’ In his bid to win the White House along with Vice President Kamala Harris, it’s likely safe to say that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz doesn’t just have a plan: He probably has a map. The Democratic leader, selected this week to be

Next City, August 7, 2024, Is Harris-Walz The First YIMBY Ticket In History? After the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed explicitly race-based zoning in 1917, the Berkeley model took off across the country as the next-best alternative for policymakers looking to maintain racial segregation. It’s still the norm in U.S. cities today, where 75% of residential-zoned

Next City, August 8, 2024, The Supreme Court’s Grants Pass Decision Has Lit A Fire Under Homeless Advocacy Groups This alarming acceleration of threats to unhoused people has pushed homeless advocacy groups to craft a menu of strategies to protect unsheltered residents. This includes developing new model legislation to prevent criminalization and calling for more