Race, Gender, and Statistical Representation: Predatory Mortgage Lending and the US Community Reinvestment Movement

Elvin K Wyly, Mona Atia, Elizabeth Lee and Pablo Mendez
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Elvin K Wyly: Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada
Mona Atia: Department of Geography, University of Washington, Box 353550, Smith Hall 408, Seattle, WA 98195, USA

Environment and Planning A, 2007, vol. 39, issue 9, 2139-2166

Abstract: American mortgage markets, once arenas of discrimination by exclusion, now operate as venues of segmentation and discrimination by inclusion: credit is widely available, but its terms vary enormously. One market segment involves sophisticated predatory practices in which certain groups of borrowers are targeted for high-cost credit that strips out home equity and worsens the risks of delinquency, default, and foreclosure. Unfortunately, it has become more difficult to measure inequalities of predatory lending: race–ethnicity and gender are ‘disappearing’ from the main public data source used to study, organize, and mobilize on issues of lending inequalities. In this paper, we present a mixed-methods case study of statistical representation of homeowners and homebuyers marginalized by race, ethnicity, and gender. A theoretical examination of official data-collection practices is followed by a discussion of alternative meanings of racial–ethnic and gender nondisclosure. Interviews with a sample of homeowners and homebuyers in the Washington, DC, area reveal some respondent ambivalence about the details of data-collection practices, but provide no consistent support for the idea that nonreporting is solely a matter of individual choice. Econometric analyses indicate that nondisclosure is driven primarily by lending-industry practices, with the strongest disparate impacts in African-American suburbs. Predatory lending is producing ambivalent spaces of racial-ethnic and gender invisibility, requiring new strategies in the reinvestment movement.

Date: 2007
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:39:y:2007:i:9:p:2139-2166

DOI: 10.1068/a38224

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