The specter of racial prejudice continues to haunt Lorain County, as a new study by a Cleveland housing research organization shows that blacks and Hispanics are denied mortgages in the county at a higher rate than whites.
The housing and subprime-mortgage crisis stands to cost minority homeowners 40 percent more of their wealth than white homeowners in similar circumstances, an advocacy group says.
Now that the Ohio House has – at long last – taken steps to rein in legalized loan-sharking, state senators should ignore pressure and protests from those who profiteer from the poor and act quickly to endorse payday-lending restrictions. House Bill 545, passed by a bipartisan 68-26 vote, would cap annual interest on payday loans at 28 percent. Currently, interest and fees can run as high as an annual rate of 391 percent. The legislation also would establish a minimum 31-day loan period, limit customers to four loans in 12 months, and prohibit loan-initiation fees.
Two thousand and eight marks the 40th Anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act. This significant legislation signed forty years ago on April 11, 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson signaled a federal commitment to ending housing discrimination and segregation. While fair housing legislation had been debated in Congress for a number of years, it took the assassination of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968, to spur Congress to finally pass a bill outlawing housing discrimination based on race and a number of other grounds.
African Americans and Hispanics in Ohio were denied mortgage loans more often than whites regardless of income, and those who did receive loans were more likely to obtain loans with high interest rates, according to a new report issued by the Housing Research & Advocacy Center(the “Housing Center”) in Cleveland, Ohio.
