New York Foreclosures Increase Dragging Down Most the Minorities

The housing crisis has been late in arriving in New York but now it is sweeping through at a fantastic pace according to a survey conducted by New York Times calculating on the mortgage data since 2005. This increase in New York Foreclosures has been dragging down the minorities the most.

The worst hit are the Blacks and the Hispanics. It is three times worse in localities occupied by them than the White neighbourhoods. 85% of the regions that have been most affected by foreclosures are occupied by the minorities. The Black middle class have taken it very hard – they had just started to improve their life style and moving up the ladder by owning homes.
Pew Research documents a pattern that is being enacted right across USA – foreclosures are the heaviest in counties where the Blacks and Latinos comprise the majority. New York localities have been especially badly hit.

In 145th street of southeast Queens about 8 of 50 homes are facing foreclosure. 6 are forlorn and vacant. James Sanders, councilperson of the city said, “My district feels like ground zero. In military terms, we are being pillaged.”

Sometime ago the banks would outline Black neighbourhoods with a marker and refuse mortgage loans to any of the residents. But lately the sub-prime mortgage brokers targeted these very localities.

The Blacks enter a distinct world of lending. From 2005 to 2006 about twelve or so banks and financial entities made huge profits out of sub-prime loans. Half of these loans were served to the Black middle class according to the findings of The Times.

A class-action suit has been filed by NAACP against some of the prominent banks of the country charging them with practices that tantamount to reverse redlining. Shaun Donovan of HUD admitted, “This was not only a problem of regulation on the mortgage front, but also a targeted scourge on minority communities.” He was delivering a lecture at New York University. Nearly 33% of the sub-prime mortgages issued from New York City, said Donovan, went to borrowers who would have qualified for traditional loans with lower interest rates. But the borrowers were not enlightened.

In the long run this will add to the differences in wealth between Blacks and non-Hispanic Whites. Ingrid Ellen of Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy of New York University said, “There’s a huge worry that this will exacerbate historic disparities between the wealth of black and white families.”

The White localities have not been kept unscathed. Recently foreclosures are breaking down all differences and attacking wealthy neighbourhoods also.

Related Posts

• The Black Middle Class is Going through a Period of Crisis Triggered by Foreclosures
• Afro-Americans And Hispanincs Will Be Absorbing Half The Nations’s Foreclosure Shock
• The Foreclosure Triggered Recession has Hit the Afro-Americans Worst
• Wells Fargo Charged For Targeting Blacks In Foreclosure Fiasco
• Ghosts Of The Past Foreclosure Crisis Haunt The Present