Bank to pay $31 million redlining settlement

January 13,2023 | By ERICKSON J OCASIO

It's the DOJ's largest ever. The Justice Department accused Los Angeles-based City National Bank on Thursday of discrimination by refusing to underwrite mortgages in predominately Black and Latino communities, requiring the bank to pay more than $31 million in the largest redlining settlement in department history. City National is the latest bank in the past several years to be found systematically avoiding lending to racial and ethnic minorities, a practice that the Biden administration has set up its own task force to combat. The Justice Department says that between 2017 and 2020, City National avoided marketing and underwriting mortgages in majority Black and Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. Other banks operating in those neighborhoods received six times the number of mortgage applications that City National did, according to federal officials.

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Black mortgage discrimination – applicants denied at an alarming rate

January 25,2022 | By Erickson Ocasio

Black mortgage applicants are being turned down at a much higher rate than their White counterparts. If homeownership is the epitome of having achieved the American Dream, for Black mortgage applicants the goal continues to be a dream deferred, according to a newly released study. According to research from Zillow drawn from federal Home Disclosure Act data, the disparity between Black and White mortgage applicants – a historical fissure – has widened even more amid the COVID-19 pandemic at an alarming rate. From 2019 to 2020, the mortgage denial for Black applicants compared to their White counterparts grew from 74% to 84%. While discrepancies between White and Black applicants are historic, the recent rise even took the economist in charge of the study by surprise. “We’ve done this research in the past,” Zillow economist Nicole Bachaud said in a telephone interview with

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Do lending institutions have a discrimination problem?

October 22,2020 | By Erickson Ocasio

Several Senate Democrats on Wednesday introduced a bill that would prohibit financial institutions from discriminating against customers. While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in certain places of public accommodation, it does not include banks or other financial institutions. The new bill, the Fair Access to Financial Services Act, would prohibit financial institutions from discrimination in providing services on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation. The bill was introduced by senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). While the Fair Housing Act already makes it illegal to discriminate in lending, financial institutions have frequently been called on the carpet for doing just that. In recent years, several big banks, including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan

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