National Fair Housing Alliance Releases a Comprehensive Redlining Toolkit to Ensure Fair Access to Credit
April 6, 2022
Media Contact: Media@KAHConsultingGroup.com
WASHINGTON, DC—Today, the National Fair Housing Alliance (“NFHA”) is releasing a comprehensive Redlining Toolkit to empower advocates, lenders, government entities, journalists, scholars, and researchers to take action to ensure fair access to credit.
The identification of redlining risk and violations is critically important to building homeownership and closing the racial wealth gap. In America, homeownership is the key to financial stability as well as other opportunities, such as home equity for college education, home repairs, medical bills, small business loan collateral, or retirement. Homeownership plays a central role in the economic security of the American consumer.
NFHA is providing this Redlining Toolkit to help civil rights and consumer advocates understand the public data relating to redlining risk to ensure that creditworthy borrowers in their communities receive fair and equitable access to credit. This toolkit can also serve as a roadmap for lenders and government entities that want to ensure compliance with fair lending laws and promote racial equity. Journalists, scholars, and researchers may find this toolkit to be an instructive guide to understanding the history of the dual credit market, the regulatory structure, and the role of public data.
“Even as we celebrate Fair Housing Month in April, we must recognize that the homeownership rate for people of color is lower today that it was over 50 years ago, before passage of the Fair Housing Act. Redlining prevents communities of color from gaining fair access to credit and is one of the key drivers of the homeownership gap,” said Maureen Yap, Senior Counsel at NFHA. “It will take coordinated and concerted efforts to reverse centuries of discrimination in financial services, including the redlining of communities of color. We hope that this comprehensive Redlining Toolkit will empower those who want to promote racial equity and fair access to credit for creditworthy borrowers and communities throughout the nation.”
This Redlining Toolkit is divided into two parts. Part I describes the history and legal framework for redlining and provides analytical tools to identify specific lenders with high redlining risk. Part II will be released later in the year and will provide guidance for taking action when a lender shows high redlining risk in a community of color and also provide useful resources, such as a step-by-step guide on how to use the data.
Click here to access the Redlining Toolkit and other fair lending resources.
Click here to register for NFHA’s public webinar regarding the Redlining Toolkit, scheduled for Thursday, April 14, 2022, 1-2:30 p.m. EST.
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The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) is the country’s only national civil rights organization dedicated solely to eliminating all forms of housing and lending discrimination and ensuring equal opportunities for all people. As the trade association for over 170 fair housing and justice-centered organizations and individuals throughout the U.S. and its territories, NFHA works to dismantle longstanding barriers to equity and build diverse, inclusive, well-resourced communities.