
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 27, 1994                   TAG: 9410270075
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:    WASHINGTON                                  LENGTH: Medium

RACIAL BIAS STILL SEEN IN LENDING

Despite an anti-discrimination crackdown by the Clinton administration, mortgage lenders continue to reject black applicants more than twice as often as whites with similar incomes, a regulatory report said Wednesday.

According to the data for 1993, banks, savings institutions and credit unions turned down 34 percent of mortgage applications received from blacks, 27.8 percent from American Indians, 25.1 percent from Hispanics, 15.3 percent from whites and 14.6 percent from Asians.

This is the fourth year that the statistics have been released by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, a coordinating body for five federal regulatory agencies.

The rejection pattern in the latest report was little different from the first year, 1990, when 33.9 percent of blacks were turned down, 22.4 percent of American Indians, 21.4 percent of Hispanics, 14.4 percent of whites and 12.9 percent of Asians.

And, as in past years, the disparity in rejection rates for whites and blacks in 1993 remained wide, even when the data were adjusted for income.

For low-income applicants - those with less than 80 percent of the median income in their areas - the rates were: blacks, 32.3 percent; Hispanics, 28.6 percent; American Indians, 27 percent; whites, 19.3 percent; and Asians, 16 percent.

Rejection rates for applicants with more than 120 percent of the median income were: blacks, 18.2 percent; Hispanics, 17.1 percent; Asians, 13.7 percent; American Indians, 13.6 percent; and whites, 7.9 percent.

Donald G. Ogilvie, executive vice president of the American Bankers Association, said the data was ``at best a flawed measure'' of his industry's commitment to fair lending. Although the report groups applicants by income, it does not take into account such factors as applicants' previous indebtedness and credit record.

Allen Fishbein, general counsel of the Washington-based Center for Community Change, which provides advice and assistance to nonprofit community groups, said lending institutions as a whole appear to be making some progress, but many individual institutions still had very poor records.

``Just like politics, all lending is local,'' he said. ``Too many [lenders] still view this as a public relations problem rather than a need for a substantive, fundamental change in the way they do business.''

The statistics covered 15.4 million home-loan applications and were compiled from 9,650 lending institutions by the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision.

by CNB