Current Racial Differences in Access to Mortgages in Detroit

[renf]

Last Friday’s Wall Street Journal published a front page story about the difficulties of getting a mortgage in Detroit. The front page includes the following statement: “Detroit is making a comeback after years of decline…But large swaths of the city are left behind, starved of the housing credit needed to revive them…. The impact runs disproportionately along racial lines in the majority Black city. Detroit’s Black residents are largely shut out of access to financing, making it tougher to attain home ownership the key to building wealth for most Americans.”

A full interior page was devoted to this topic with four
maps showing that Detroit neighborhoods that were red lined in 1939 were not places of origination for mortgages in 2019. The author’s contention is that the federally and state chartered fiscal institutions do not well serve those who wish to buy moderate or low priced homes in Detroit meaning that African Americans often cannot get mortgages and are thereby blocked for the normal route to wealth accumulation.

There are certainly no suggestions of racial discrimination but
there are suggestions that the current operation of way people
get financing to buy homes has a systematic racial impact which impedes the revitalization of many Detroit neighborhoods. The work of organizations seeking to alter the current system is mentioned.

[Ray1936]

I don't have a job, and I don't have any money. But you gotta give me a mortgage.

Yeah, right.

[Richard]

I kinda disagree with WSJ,the city and banks teamed up to offer all kinds of incentives and funding opportunities for the hardest hit neighborhoods,even as far as packaging land bank homes remodeled and financed at lower rates.

But yea one still needs to have a job and income.

Even habitat for humanity requires a potential home owner to put in a few hundred hours of volunteer work helping rebuild other homes before you can get yours in return for the advantage.

Besides everybody touts $100 homes in Detroit on every street corner,who needs a mortgage anyways?

[bust]

Well, it's not as easy to have a bank account when your local options are only check cashing agencies and payday loans. And not having a bank account is awful for your credit score.

It's an anecdote: I knew someone who no joke kept all her money in her mattress because she knew enough people who had been screwed so often she didn't trust banks even if there were one still nearby. Never had a credit card or a mortgage. She wouldn't have qualified anyway. Toward the end of her life she probably could've gotten one of those store cards, but the retailers outsource those to especially unscrupulous companies whose terms and business practices will get you any which way they can. Didn't want one. Had she gotten caught by that it would've sent her credit score lower. It was such a good thing she lived in a home her family had owned since almost she arrived in the US and didn't owe anything to anyone. She worked as a maid and until the day she died didn't like cold food, even if cold was what it was supposed to be, because all the food she ate as a maid were cold leftovers. And she saved, and saved, and saved. When she passed her descendants had a hard time depositing her cash they recovered because much of it was so old it looked different from what we use today. They did it in small batches, mixed with current money, so sometimes the banks didn't refuse.

On the other hand it's super easy to build a credit score if you go to college. Banks and credit card companies [[aka banks) are so eager to sign you up [[for predatory terms and conditions less terrible than at check cashing agencies) they set up booths beckoning everyone at the quad.

As for $100 homes in Detroit, that's one twelfth of the number I heard a lot lately: $1200 from people who justified their opposition to the stimulus checks that were sent out, delayed, so they could bear the imitation sharpie signature of DJT. They said it was extravagant because for that you could buy a home in Detroit. Must have been something they picked up from airwaves I avoid. As we know, even for what you can get for $12,000 the costs of rehabilitating and comfortably living in the home are almost always so high the math doesn't work out. Maybe only if you don't intend to live there and are in on some slumlord scheme, but I still don't get it and wouldn't want to if I did.

[Zacha341]

What? You don't believe in the equity of outcome view? Everyone deserves the same no matter what they put forth or do.

What's the matter with you!?

I don't have a job, and I don't have any money. But you gotta give me a mortgage.

Yeah, right.

[Danny]

Mortgage Companies these days need to know what income and credit ratings you have in order to lend their monies to you. You better a career with a working salary, less debt means good credit points and how to come up with a tight budget plan to pay off the mortgage.

When it comes to black folks want to buy a good decent home. Those mortgage companies don't need to look your income that you have. They just look at your black face and your attitude. You may or mostly may not get the loan.



Even Mortgage companies want to expect poor and black people to look for a home in ghettohoods or neighborhoods in transition from white to black. I have seen it when I took a tip toe to some bedroom suburbs.


Eastpointe, Harper Woods, Warren, Oak Park, Southfield, West Bloomfield TWP. Farmington Hills, Redford TWP. Inkster, Romulus, Taylor, Van Buren TWP, Westland, Bellville, Sumpter TWP, Ypsilanti, Mt. Clemens, Roseville, River Rouge and Ecorse. Are those target hoods that mortgage companies wants black folks to buy those homes cheap and loan cheap.

[Scottathew]

I don't have a job, and I don't have any money. But you gotta give me a mortgage.

Yeah, right.

What? You don't believe in the equity of outcome view? Everyone deserves the same no matter what they put forth or do.

What's the matter with you!?

Sweet way to broad-brush paint Detroit residents as lazy bums instead of actually addressing the issues.

[Henry Whalley]

WSJ is fake news.

[Wheels]

Give them jobs no money!