Warren’s bill tries to solve a problem that is explicitly rooted in race, but without mentioning race. That’s a strategy that could either narrow the gap or blur the issue.
Here’s how it works: Title II of Warren’s proposed bill establishes a new fund within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This to-be-determined purse would provide down-payment assistance to first-time homebuyers in communities that were once subject to
redlining. Redlining refers to the notorious practice under the New Deal by which the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation marked up residential maps to indicate risk for lenders, often assigning black communities failing grades. Legal redlining by lenders persisted into the 1970s (and
discriminatory maps still surface from time to time). Formerly redlined neighborhoods are sites of
deep racial disparities in home value and lending activity.
Under the new dispensation, homes in low-income census tracts that are within areas once graded as “hazardous” by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation—or areas that were otherwise zoned for minority residents—would qualify for the down-payment program. To be eligible to receive the assistance (3.5 percent, good enough for a Federal Housing Administration loan), an individual would need to be a first-time buyer, a resident of the area for four years, and earning no more than 120 percent of the area median income.
So this part of Warren’s plan—titled “Reversing the Legacy of Housing Discrimination and Government Negligence”—is an effort to identify communities segregated by law and provide cash assistance to home-buyers in these areas. But the filters can only do so much. This formula cannot guarantee that white gentrifiers never qualify for a program intended for African-American and other minority buyers, although the bill seems to bear them in mind.
Inside Senator Elizabeth Warren's Housing Crisis Fix - CityLab
Just when I wanted to give her credit.
fukk off you fake native american lady.
@ the destitute nature of reservations) but nah, they got their reparations. Black Americans are the only group that have not been rightfully given reparations.
