Your Stock Guide, May 1, 2022, The History of Lending Discrimination
Laws today protect borrowers from discriminatory lending practices, but that wasn’t always the case. For decades U.S. banks denied mortgages to Black families—and those belonging to other racial and ethnic minority groups—who lived in certain areas “redlined” by a federal government agency called the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC).
The immediate effect of redlining was that residents in racial and ethnic minority neighborhoods couldn’t access capital to improve the residents’ housing (to buy or renovate) and economic opportunities. Of course, the impacts of redlining didn’t magically end when the FHA was passed in 1968. Instead, as a 2018 study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) shows, the economic and racial segregation created by redlining persists in many cities today.
A 2020 study by researchers at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, and the University of Richmond found that “the history of redlining, segregation, and disinvestment not only reduced minority wealth, it impacted health and longevity, resulting in a legacy of chronic disease and premature death in many high minority neighborhoods.” One sobering impact: Life expectancy is 3.6 years lower in redlined communities than in communities of the same age that had received high grades from the HOLC.
