Fair Housing / Lending News

Some people are in denial that in this day and age, discrimination simply does not exist anymore. Taking things at face value, one can see how an individual may be lulled into a false sense of security – legislation designed to protect minorities, affirmative action, et cetera, exist for the advancement of colored peoples in this nation. However, according to a recent study by the Consumer Action group , all is not fair in home and housing. Consumer Action contacted 5,000 community organizations across the country, compiling information from 549 respondents, who reported “serious issues with housing discrimination.” The survey shows that immigrants, the disabled, and families with children aren’t welcome in some places, and that “immigrants face the greatest hardships in finding legal recourse for housing discrimination.” One reason, Consumer Action claims, may be cultural barriers. Non-English-speaking minorities could be left out in the cold by unfair housing practices. The study ...

The National Mortgage Settlement was enacted not just to punish the wrong-doing of the nation’s five biggest lenders, but to create new safeguards to regulate the home buyer’s market. The deal involved Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Ally Financial to pay an unprecedented $24 billion to fund government programs like the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, or HAMP. While the effectiveness of these government programs funded by the settlement is being debated, the policies put in place by the settlement are due to expire in 2015. The Huffington Post reports that legal agreements among the banks, and the states and federal government hold for only three-and-a-half years. Good news for the banks. Bad news continues for those facing foreclosure. But there’s a way around the expiration of the Federal mandates. California Attorney General Kamala Harris, for example, is attempting to make permanent some of the National Mortgage Settlement's most important ...

Last November, we reported on Gallagher v. Magner, 619 F.3d 823, 829 (8th Cir. 2010), and its potentially lethal effect on a cornerstone of Fair Housing actions: disparate impact and the application of the McDonnell-Douglas “burden-shifting” analysis. However, on Friday, February 10, 2012, the parties withdrew the case from the US Supreme Court just a few weeks before the scheduled argument of February 29. The US Supreme Court granted the withdrawal. The parties in the case were the City of St. Paul, Minnesota (namely, the Department of Neighborhood Housing and Property Improvement [DNHPI]), and property owners who allege that their homes were targeted by housing code enforcement personnel and their draconian treatment of so-called violations of the housing code. The Plaintiffs brought suit against the City of St. Paul and the DNHPI alleging that the city’s enforcement of its housing code had a disparate impact on minority home and property owners, “whose customers were mainly indiv...

On January 13, Illinois Senate Bill 1259 was signed by Governor Pat Quinn, requiring banks and lending institutions to respond to a short sale offer by a homeowner within 90 days. The bill also gives courts the authority to hold banks accountable to the 90 day response provision. Previously, the court had no jurisdiction over banks, allowing them unprecedented control over the foreclosure process. "Families are not losing their homes to foreclosure because they are dead beats refusing to pay their mortgages," Illinois State Senator Silverstein said on a news release published on his website . "They are people who are struggling to get through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, we are seeing banks stalling the process of a short sale in order to push through foreclosure proceedings, giving families limited options to get out of their mortgage debt." In 2010, the number of new short sales late that year had i ncreased nearly 83 p...

On November 7, 2011, the US Supreme court granted certiorari in Gallagher v. Magner , 619 F.3d 823, 829 (8th Cir. 2010) cert. granted, 10-1032, 2011 WL 531692 (U.S. Nov. 7, 2011). The case arose out of the Eighth Circuit when several owners and former owners of rental properties in St. Paul, Minnesota brought consolidated actions, challenging the City of St. Paul's enforcement of its housing code. In 1993, the City enacted the Property Maintenance Code which “[e]stablishes minimum maintenance standards for all structures and premises for basic equipment and facilities for light, ventilation, heating and sanitation; for safety from fire; for crime prevention; for space, use and location; and for safe and sanitary maintenance of all structures and premises.” To enforce the code, the City established the Department of Neighborhood Housing and Property Improvement (“DNHPI”) as an executive department responsible for administering and enforcing the Housing Code. DNHPI was empowered to ...

Derrick Bell, distinguished Civil Rights advocate and father of Critical Race Theory, died today at the age of 80, the New York Times reports . Bell, the first African-American law professor at Harvard, and the first dean of a non-historically black law school, led an interesting life, influencing our own President Barack Obama, who compared him to bus boycott heroine Rosa Parks. He left Harvard Law School when they refused to change their hiring practices to allow minorities a chance to teach at the famous Ivy League school. Perhaps more famous for rejecting high positions in education and government than accepting them, Bell once resigned from working at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department in his 20s, after his superiors told him to give up his membership in the N.A.A.C.P., believing it posed a conflict of interest. Professor Bell’s core beliefs included what he called “the interest convergence dilemma” — the idea that whites would not support efforts to improve the p...

The ongoing effort to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, some six years ago, continues, but all has not been well on the path to recovery. A few months ago, we posted a story on “ The Road Home ”, a program which would put thousands of people in newly-constructed homes, but the program was not without its’ faults. This time, however, residents are fighting back against housing discrimination. The Times-Picayune published news in the beginning of this month stating that a group of New Orleans landlords agreed to pay around $70,000 in damages and penalties to settle various suits against them by prospective tenants. Read the story here . These lawsuits alleged that the landlords denied housing to African-Americans at an apartment building which makes it ripe for a Fair Housing Act claim. The lawsuit alleges that Betty Bouchon, the building manager, failed to return calls from African-American testers while returning phone calls from white testers, made statements to white teste...