New Orleans In the early days of ACORN in Little Rock in lower income, largely African-American neighborhoods before the 1978 Community Reinvestment Act was passed forbidding racial discrimination in bank lending and outlawing redlining, the stories of families trying to rent-to-own their homes were legion. I read many of these documents carefully and knew families …
Tag: housing
New and Better Mortgage Lending Standards Maybe
New Orleans The press is making a big deal of Mel Watt’s comments as the chief housing regulator at the Federal Housing Finance Agency to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s convention in Vegas. He claims he has a new plan to loosen up the rules so that banks finally lend some money to first-time buyers and …
Inclusionary but Unaffordable “Affordable” Housing in London
London In the dark days of neo-liberalism when cities and states are embracing private developers to impact their profound public responsibilities to provide decent and adequate housing for families regardless of income the whole notion of so-called “affordable” housing seems to have been left in the rubbish at the construction site. Where recently we thought …