June 9, 2016
The Department of Housing and Urban Development have announced an agreement in a housing discrimination case involving First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company.
According to a press release on the HUD official site, the case involved allegations that the bank “denied mortgage loans to African American, Latino and Asian American mortgage applicants at a disproportionately higher rate than white applicants. HUD’s investigation concerned retail loans originated by the banks predecessor, First Citizens Bank and Trust Co., in 2010 and 2011.”
According to the HUD official site, Gustavo Velasquez, HUDs Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, commented on the settlement, saying, “This agreement aligns our shared goals of promoting fair housing and expanding access to credit for qualified working families. HUD will use its enforcement powers to ensure that everyone has equal access to credit regardless of what they look like or where they come from.”
This case began in 2011 when HUD filed a complaint against First Citizens Bank and Trust Company, “after conducting an analysis of 2010 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data. In January 2015, the South Carolina-based bank was merged into First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company, a North Carolina-chartered commercial lender. As the successor, First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company continued to cooperate with HUD throughout this investigation and ultimate resolution” announced on the HUD official site.
First-Citizens agreed to take several steps as part of the settlement, designed to protect equal access to credit “including refraining from unlawful consideration of race or national origin when selecting sites for branch offices and services offered, conducting marketing, and defining Community Reinvestment Act assessment areas” according to HUD. First-Citizens has also agreed to:
–Make $140,000 available to nonprofit organizations that provide credit and housing counseling, financial literacy training, and related programs to first-time home buyers in South Carolina;
–Adopt a new standardized and objective set of guidelines for a second review of retail channel residential loan applications initially denied by the automated underwriting system;
–Require all of its employees and agents who have substantial involvement in manual underwriting of mortgages in their retail channel to attend fair housing training;
–Hire three mortgage banker market specialists that will focus on diverse lending in the Charleston-North Charleston-Summerville, Columbia, and Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin metro areas;
–Spend $20,000 for affirmative marketing, advertising and outreach to residents in majority-minority census tracts in South Carolina; and
–Partner with non-profit or community groups to conduct at least 24 financial education programs in South Carolina for individuals and small business owners.
Those who experience any form of housing discrimination are urged to report the activity to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. You can get in touch with the HUD Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at (800) 669-9777 (voice) or (800) 927-9275 (TTY). Housing discrimination complaints may also be filed at www.hud.gov/fairhousing.
Do you work in residential real estate? You should know about the free tool offered by FHA.com. It is designed especially for real estate websites; a widget that displays FHA loan limits for the counties serviced by those sites. It is simple to spend a few seconds customizing the state, counties, and widget size for the tool; you can copy the code and paste it into your website with ease. Get yours today:
http://www.fha.com/fha_loan_limits_widget
Joe Wallace has been specializing in military and personal finance topics since 1995. His work has appeared on Air Force Television News, The Pentagon Channel, ABC and a variety of print and online publications. He is a 13-year Air Force veteran and a member of the Air Force Public Affairs Alumni Association. He was Managing editor for www.valoans.com for (8) years and is currently the Associate Editor for FHANewsblog.com.
Browse by Date: