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Foreclosures Hit Minorities Hardest
allen griggs
Member Posts: 35,509 ✭✭✭✭
By MICHAEL POWELL and JANET ROBERTS
Published: May 15, 2009
nytimes.com
Turn the corner on 145th Street in Jamaica, Queens, and it is as though a cyclone has wheeled through.
One resident, Lakisha Brown, a hospital worker and mother of two, snatched her house back from foreclosure last month, if only temporarily. "We need to sell fast," she says. "I'm just trying to save what's left of my credit." Across the street in this black middle-class neighborhood, Patrick Nicholas, a surgical technician in blue scrubs, shakes his dreadlocks and shrugs. He rents but is moving out. "The owner got foreclosed and told us to leave," he says.
Six doors away, past two foreclosed and boarded-up homes, a burly man in a blue union jacket declines to give his name but his problem is evident. A foreclosure notice is pasted to the door of his house. His tone is mournful. "Tough times, man," he says. "Tough, tough times."
Late to arrive in the Northeast, the foreclosure crisis has swept through the New York region at an explosive pace in the past two years, destroying billions of dollars in housing wealth, according to a New York Times analysis of foreclosures filed since 2005 and federal mortgage data.
It now touches every corner of the region, from estates along the Connecticut Gold Coast to the suburban tracts of Long Island, where 6 percent of all mortgages are at least 90 days delinquent, the point at which foreclosure proceedings usually begin.
But the storm has fallen with a special ferocity on black and Latino homeowners, the analysis shows. Defaults occur three times as often in mostly minority census tracts as in mostly white ones. Eighty-five percent of the worst-hit neighborhoods - where the default rate is at least double the regional average - have a majority of black and Latino homeowners.
And the hardest blows rain down on the backbone of minority neighborhoods: the black middle class. In New York City, for example, black households making more than $68,000 a year are almost five times as likely to hold high-interest subprime mortgages as are whites of similar - or even lower - incomes.
This holds a special poignancy. Just four or five years ago, black homeownership was rising sharply, after decades in which discriminatory lending and zoning practices discouraged many blacks from buying. Now, as damage ripples outward, black families in foreclosure lose savings and credit, neighbors see the value of their homes decline, and renters are evicted.
That pattern plays out across the nation. A study released this week by the Pew Research Center also shows foreclosure taking the heaviest toll on counties that have black and Latino majorities, with the New York region among the badly hit.
On 145th Street in southeast Queens, just south of Linden Boulevard, attached brick homes with tidy, fenced-in gardens stretch into the distance. Children play tag under blooming oaks. But 8 of these roughly 50 homes face foreclosure; 4 are vacant; 2 have plywood boards nailed over punched-out windows.
"My district feels like ground zero," said City Councilman James Sanders Jr., an African-American who represents hundreds of blocks in Queens like this one. "In military terms, we are being pillaged."
Published: May 15, 2009
nytimes.com
Turn the corner on 145th Street in Jamaica, Queens, and it is as though a cyclone has wheeled through.
One resident, Lakisha Brown, a hospital worker and mother of two, snatched her house back from foreclosure last month, if only temporarily. "We need to sell fast," she says. "I'm just trying to save what's left of my credit." Across the street in this black middle-class neighborhood, Patrick Nicholas, a surgical technician in blue scrubs, shakes his dreadlocks and shrugs. He rents but is moving out. "The owner got foreclosed and told us to leave," he says.
Six doors away, past two foreclosed and boarded-up homes, a burly man in a blue union jacket declines to give his name but his problem is evident. A foreclosure notice is pasted to the door of his house. His tone is mournful. "Tough times, man," he says. "Tough, tough times."
Late to arrive in the Northeast, the foreclosure crisis has swept through the New York region at an explosive pace in the past two years, destroying billions of dollars in housing wealth, according to a New York Times analysis of foreclosures filed since 2005 and federal mortgage data.
It now touches every corner of the region, from estates along the Connecticut Gold Coast to the suburban tracts of Long Island, where 6 percent of all mortgages are at least 90 days delinquent, the point at which foreclosure proceedings usually begin.
But the storm has fallen with a special ferocity on black and Latino homeowners, the analysis shows. Defaults occur three times as often in mostly minority census tracts as in mostly white ones. Eighty-five percent of the worst-hit neighborhoods - where the default rate is at least double the regional average - have a majority of black and Latino homeowners.
And the hardest blows rain down on the backbone of minority neighborhoods: the black middle class. In New York City, for example, black households making more than $68,000 a year are almost five times as likely to hold high-interest subprime mortgages as are whites of similar - or even lower - incomes.
This holds a special poignancy. Just four or five years ago, black homeownership was rising sharply, after decades in which discriminatory lending and zoning practices discouraged many blacks from buying. Now, as damage ripples outward, black families in foreclosure lose savings and credit, neighbors see the value of their homes decline, and renters are evicted.
That pattern plays out across the nation. A study released this week by the Pew Research Center also shows foreclosure taking the heaviest toll on counties that have black and Latino majorities, with the New York region among the badly hit.
On 145th Street in southeast Queens, just south of Linden Boulevard, attached brick homes with tidy, fenced-in gardens stretch into the distance. Children play tag under blooming oaks. But 8 of these roughly 50 homes face foreclosure; 4 are vacant; 2 have plywood boards nailed over punched-out windows.
"My district feels like ground zero," said City Councilman James Sanders Jr., an African-American who represents hundreds of blocks in Queens like this one. "In military terms, we are being pillaged."
Comments
Several factors,
One is that culturally blacks have a higher default rate, many new home owners had rented for their entire life and did not have the background of ever paying any note on time, banks loaned them money to buy a house they could not afford to appease the NAACP and others who cried fowl. Now loaning them the money is foul, you can not win when someone wants a give away.
+9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
It's not about color is about lack of e "losing" there home simply just don't give a crap. They don't pay there bills then they lose there house, white, black, brown, purple, none of that matters. Green is the only color banks care about and if you don't pay your loans then you lose your property. What's the problem.
I guess this story is supposed to show how white people are still racist today, but to me it just shows how the "minorities" should not have been given those loans in the first place because the could NOT afford them. Granted some of them may have lost a job and I feel for them but the majority of them just don't give a chit and don't pay there bills. They think that me and you should pay there bills for them because they are "minorities". The reason for all the "" is because around here blacks or latinos are NOT the "minorities" but at least on a equal playing field and I think they are the MAJORITY.
Mike
We need massive demonstrations.
If those scheming, racist, cracker bankers hadn't loaned those poor black folks all that money, they wouldn't be going into foreclosure.
I have NEVER had an asian be turned down for credit, the closest I came was a 700 credit score, and he was going thru a nasty divorce.
white people are about 70-30 good credit to bad ratio. for awhile all we got were people with poor credit, all the ads and news claiming dealers are suffering bring them out because they believe we will do whatever to get a car off the lot.
There is something to groups of people who believe they are oppressed. They give up on themselves more easily I think, or they figure they are already bad so who cares. I think half their problems come from self hate snf poor attitude
This whole mess was precipitated by leftist feel good policies demanding that minorities get more favorable loans to increase minority home ownership.
Once more minorities got more loans they couldn't afford, it was inevitable that once the gig was up, they would be hit hardest by the meltdown.
Of course they are.
This whole mess was precipitated by leftist feel good policies demanding that minorities get more favorable loans to increase minority home ownership.
Once more minorities got more loans they couldn't afford, it was inevitable that once the gig was up, they would be hit hardest by the meltdown.
The mistake is believing the politicians did this to help anyone...the poor were just another target demopgraphic that was under represented, it caused housing prices to jump everyone got paid and the proper gratuity was paid to the masters. they were just one easy target to make money off, same as all the car dealers that offer instant credit. the CC companies that offer secured CC...just there for the money, congress turned a blind eye to those and an open hand to the mortgages.
For the love of God, where are Al Sharpton and Jessee Jackson?
We need massive demonstrations.
If those scheming, racist, cracker bankers hadn't loaned those poor black folks all that money, they wouldn't be going into foreclosure.
You don't hear from Jessie lately because he was part of the original problem! He told the government officials that the financial institutions were "Redlining" his people and not giving loans to the less fortunate who wanted to own a home. Funny how he's not sticking his 2 cents in lately, because he would get reemed for starting the problem in the first place.
Who here would like to own a nice home and not have to pay for it, HELLO, i would like that very much. They were writing bad loans and knew it! Like i said before, you make your bed, now sleep in it. The only problem is, that the general public gets to pay for Jessie's, Al Sharpton, and Obama's mess!