by Marvin J. Ramirez
Marvin Ramirez
A recent foreclosure study shows a dramatic injustice done to minorities.
While the losses stand to hit Oakland with more than $875 million, national losses could exceed $25 billion. And what is more highlighted in this study is the racial disparities in the so called, high-cost sub-prime lending.
It would seem that is all a fraud, purposely perpetrated against hard-working people, especially people of color.
I call it fraud because I’ve heard in news accounts, that the banks or lenders, which at night pay each other with promissory notes and not with Federal Reserve Notes (cash dollars), have been putting pressure on mortgage appraisers, to inflate home prices. And this means that if you bought a home at a certain high price, you could’ve paid an illusionary price – not real. However, in your pocket is real. And many like you, might now be about to lose what you called for a short period of time, your home.
It’s been a piece-of-cake deal for the lenders, who probably, in private, divide the profits sucked in from those desired dreamers of owning their own home by charging them more than what the real value is.
Not only many people are losing their home after the bubbled mortgages hit the ceiling, but in the middle of this scheme, entire neighborhoods are being broken up by the displacement of working families.
According to the ACORN study, the real costs communities incur when high foreclosure rates spawn is that they derelict buildings and depress residential and commercial property values.
“Neighborhoods with concentrated foreclosures experience higher rates of violent crime and artificially decreased property values, placing additional costs and maintenance burdens on local governments and devaluing the assets of neighbors – even those in good financial standing,” says the study.
As ACORN recommends, the rules of lending should change, or we will continue being banks’ slaves.
Loans should be modifi ed into a fi xed rate loan based on the borrower’s capacity to repay the mortgage. This could stop the abuse and bring peace to families. But this can only happens if laws are passed for this purpose.
