Report shows sharp rise in mortgage lending to minorities in 1994

Jet, March 4, 1996

In 1994, there was a sharp rise in mortgage lenders making loans to Blacks and Hispanics, according to a Wall Street Journal computer analysis.

The report, which did an analysis of millions of mortgages from the latest data available, showed that homeloan approvals to Blacks skyrocketed more than 38 percent in 1994 from 1993 as did loan approvals for Hispanics, which also rose steeply by 31 percent.

It seems the escalation in credit to minorities was pushed by tough fair-lending enforcement and federal community-investment rules that encouraged such loans and required public disclosure of every mortgage lender's loans by race and income, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Five years ago, most banks didn't take the community-lending laws seriously. Today there's more lending in low-income urban and rural communities than ever before," said John Taylor, head of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and a longtime bank critic.