IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/chosxx/v33y2018i5p759-776.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The social structure of mortgage discrimination

Author

Listed:
  • Justin P. Steil
  • Len Albright
  • Jacob S. Rugh
  • Douglas S. Massey

Abstract

In the decade leading up to the US housing crisis, black and Latino borrowers disproportionately received high-cost, high-risk mortgages—a lending disparity well documented by prior quantitative studies. We analyse qualitative data from actors in the lending industry to identify the social structure though which this mortgage discrimination took place. Our data consist of 220 depositions, declarations and related exhibits submitted by borrowers, loan originators, investment banks and others in fair lending cases. Our analyses reveal specific mechanisms through which loan originators identified and gained the trust of black and Latino borrowers in order to place them into higher cost, higher risk loans than similarly situated white borrowers. Loan originators sought out lists of individuals already borrowing money to buy consumer goods in predominantly black and Latino neighbourhoods to find potential borrowers, and exploited intermediaries within local social networks, such as community or religious leaders, to gain those borrowers’ trust.

Suggested Citation

  • Justin P. Steil & Len Albright & Jacob S. Rugh & Douglas S. Massey, 2018. "The social structure of mortgage discrimination," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(5), pages 759-776, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:33:y:2018:i:5:p:759-776
    DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2017.1390076
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02673037.2017.1390076
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/02673037.2017.1390076?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Debby Lindsey-Taliefero & Lynne Kelly, 2021. "Reverse Mortgage Lending Disparities and the Economically Vulnerable," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 27(3), pages 159-169, August.
    2. Enrique Acosta & Alain Gagnon & Nadine Ouellette & Robert R. Bourbeau & Marilia R. Nepomuceno & Alyson A. van Raalte, 2020. "The boomer penalty: excess mortality among baby boomers in Canada and the United States," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2020-003, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    3. Ian Dunham & Alec Foster, 2023. "FRINGE FINANCIAL ECOLOGIES AND PLACE‐BASED EXCLUSION: A Tale of Two Cities," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(6), pages 881-898, November.
    4. Shan Yu & Can Cui, 2021. "Difference in Housing Finance Usage and Its Impact on Housing Wealth Inequality in Urban China," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-16, December.
    5. Gregory Sharp & Ellen Whitehead & Matthew Hall, 2020. "Tapped Out? Racial Disparities in Extrahousehold Kin Resources and the Loss of Homeownership," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(5), pages 1903-1928, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:33:y:2018:i:5:p:759-776. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/chos20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.