Minorities Hit Hardest by Foreclosures in New York

The New York Times ^ | May 15, 2009 | MICHAEL POWELL and JANET ROBERTS

[Eric Blair 2084]

Turn the corner on 145th Street in Jamaica, Queens, and it is as though a cyclone has wheeled through. One resident, Lakisha Brown, a hospital worker and mother of two, snatched her house back from foreclosure last month, if only temporarily. “We need to sell fast,” she says. “I’m just trying to save what’s left of my credit.” Across the street in this black middle-class neighborhood, Patrick Nicholas, a surgical technician in blue scrubs, shakes his dreadlocks and shrugs. He rents but is moving out. “The owner got foreclosed and told us to leave,” he says.

Six doors away, past two foreclosed and boarded-up homes, a burly man in a blue union jacket declines to give his name but his problem is evident. A foreclosure notice is pasted to the door of his house. His tone is mournful. “Tough times, man,” he says. “Tough, tough times.”

Late to arrive in the Northeast, the foreclosure crisis has swept through the New York region at an explosive pace in the past two years, destroying billions of dollars in housing wealth, according to a New York Times analysis of foreclosures filed since 2005 and federal mortgage data

[GrouchoTex]

“Six doors away, past two foreclosed and boarded-up homes, a burly man in a blue union jacket declines to give his name but his problem is evident. A foreclosure notice is pasted to the door of his house. His tone is mournful. “Tough times, man,” he says. “Tough, tough times.”

Okay I am from Texas, so I live in a “right to work” state.

What is a “Blue Union Jacket”?

Does it have a “Union Label”?

If it were another color, would it have been a “Non-Union Jacket”?

WTF is a “Union Jacket”?

[Eric Blair 2084]

Yet, there is only stuff about “Blacks and Latino’s” in the story. What is happening to Asian Americans, Arab Americans, Native Americans, ETC.? Aren't THEY minorities anymore?

Good point. Asian Americans (Indians, Chinese) all went to school, took advantage of the great opportunities in this country and have much higher average annual incomes than even white Americans.

Arab Americans all own liquor stores, 7-11's and are making a fortune driving cabs. Is this a great country or what?

Native Americans are the only ones below even Blacks and Latinos. That's why libs in NY still let them sell cigs tax free. White elitist libs figure that their ancestors have already beaten them enough and now they feel guilty.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Well, all of the minorities who voted for Obama helped put him in the White House. Now they are realizing just what his policies mean for them. Talk about a rude awakening.

Wait till Kobe Bryant and Lebron James figure out that they have to pay the 6% FICA SS tax not just on their first 100k something in earnings but on all of their earnings in order to save SS.

Imagine that. You make $20 mill/year and have to pay $1.2 mill/year` in exchange for maybe getting a check for 2k per month in 40 years.

[TheFourthMagi]

Are these the same minorities that received loans from banks that were blackmailed by the Community Reinvestment Act?

Yes.

[yankeedame]

...The leftist politicians forced the banks to cave when the race card was played...on pain of being prohibited from doing ANY business at all. The rest is history.

Correction, "the rest" is the ghost of elections past. There are future elections ahead. IOW, voters may forget, but ACORN never does.

[Binstence]

Lao Tzu - “Give a Man a Fish, Feed Him For a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, Feed Him For a Lifetime” After thousands of years the wisdom of Lao Tzu still holds up.

Hell, even Frederick Douglass said, “Where there is no struggle there can be no progress.”

So, at the ugly heart of the entire financial collapse is godless, guilty, white so called “liberals” (Who are the cheapest and most selfish people on earth with their OWN MONEY) and their thinly veiled BIGOTRY that the the poor minority cannot make it without them. That is the crux of the problem.

The narcissistic so called, “Academics” feel guilty for their own greed and self- aggrandizement yet at the same time have an overriding need to feel superior to the “underclass” and an archetypal desire to CONTROL them by keeping them in an unnatural state of dependency. Just about as ugly as it gets.

For those of you who have still not realized it, LIBERALISM IS A DANGEROUS AND COUNTER EVOLUTIONARY MENTAL DISORDER. (Ooooo, I feel much better having spit that out.)

[Rembrandt]

“Arab Americans all own liquor stores, 7-11’s and are making a fortune driving cabs.”

And the donut places are all owned by South Asia Indians - just ask Joe Bidet.

[dsrtsage]

This is from JustFacts.com. Pay special attention to the last line...

* As of 1999, about 45% of blacks and 67% of whites own homes. (184)

* As of 1997, 75% of black married couples between the ages of 45 and 54 own homes. 81% of black married couples older than 54 own homes. (114)

* The ACLU and NAACP have accused mortgage companies of discrimination because they reject blacks at a greater rate than they reject whites. (86)

*

Rate of:
Blacks
Whites

Mortgage rejections (1989)
50%
26%

Poor credit histories (1999)
48%
27%

(18)(87)

* In 1996, the ACLU filed a legal complaint against the mortgage company, PHH. The complaint was based upon the fact that PHH had higher rejection rates for blacks and for people buying in predominately black neighborhoods. (86)(88)

* The ACLU analyzed PHH’s lending patterns while controlling for factors that included the applicant’s income. The unequal rejection rates between whites and blacks persisted. (88)

* The ACLU did not analyze PHH’s lending patterns while controlling for poor credit histories. (88)

* As of 1999, blacks with incomes between $65,000 and $75,000 have a higher percentage of poor credit histories than whites with incomes of $25,000 and below. Whites with incomes between $65,000 and $75,000 have a similar percentage of poor credit histories as Asian people with incomes of $25,000 and below. (The numbers cited are from a Freddie Mac study that classified an individual as having a poor credit history if they had 2 bills more than 30 days overdue, one bill more than 90 days overdue, a lien, judgment, or bankruptcy in the past two years.) (184)

* For people with incomes between $45,000 and $65,000, the rates for poor credit histories are as follows:

Asians
15.7%

Blacks
48%

Hispanics
28%

Whites
21.6%

(184)

* PHH does not have retail stores or outlets. They market their mortgages over the phone and on the Internet, and do not require anyone to submit their race with their application. (88)(89)

[calex59]

I always thought it was “people unable to pay the loans they shouldn’t have been given lose the houses they can’t pay for!”. The left acts as if somehow no matter what, these people should keep their house. What a bunch of dumb a**es.

[Godwin1]

Inevitable.

[DoughtyOne]

First you whine about the poor not being able to buy a house.

Then you give them a loan, you know they can’t service to buy one.

Then they don’t make their payments, and you act surprised.

And then you herald the fact that people with no money, are the ones hardest hit by mortgage failures.

And then you vote for Obama, because the rules your party set up caused this, and you’ve blamed it all on the Republicans.

True enough, the Republicans played along, so have at it.

[DoughtyOne]

Remember, this is the party that wants a pass/fail grading system, yet can’t figure out why our children don’t excel. Their inability to cope with reality runs deep.

[Larry381]

I'm familiar with this part of Queens. It is occupied by a large proportion of city workers and those in the health care industry-people who ordinarily have no prospect of losing their jobs so in many cases losing their jobs is not part of the reason they're losing their homes. It's a predominately black area and the homes in most cases are well kept. It's been a middle class black area for at least 50 years but only in the last few years has their been a massive problem with foreclosures.

[wardaddy]

worse than that if you’re self employed

[wardaddy]

Asian Americans (Indians, Chinese) all went to school, took advantage of the great opportunities in this country and have much higher average annual incomes than even white Americans.

that is debatable actually because reams of illegal Asians who are quite poor or even technically indentured to whomever got them here do not report but what is true is that in the top 5 percentile of median income that Asians as a group double their proportional rate of the population, hence a lot of quite rich Asians whilst Whites are only somewhat overrepresented and Blacks and Latinos way underrepresented.

[radiohead]

Did the study say why the disparities existed? These incomes ($65,000 and $75,000) seem pretty good. Is this family or individual income? Did blacks have larger families, so the money didn’t stretch as far? Were they just irresponsible with their money? I know a lot of people (black and white) who don’t get the ‘pay your bills on time’ thing, even with money sitting in the bank. You could have bad credit because you are a slow pay, not just you don’t pay your bills. With that kind of income, it’s very curious to have bad credit, short of some major job or health disaster.

All that said, my whole life I’ve seen black people buy fancy cars, expensive purses, shoes, and clothing, take trips to Jamaica,etc. and not put a penny in the bank. Or they rush to buy a house before they’re financially ready and end up creating financial problems. I get so tired of being hit up for money because I’m the only one who pays bills on time, puts money aside, and tries to live w/n my income. In order to protect myself, I’ve just had to say ‘no’ a lot; doing so can cause family discord, but I refuse to be a financial mess.

[Eric Blair 2084]

that is debatable actually because reams of illegal Asians who are quite poor or even technically indentured to whomever got them here do not report but what is true is that in the top 5 percentile of median income

I realize that there are Chinese people smuggled over here in cargo containers to work as sex slaves and indentured servants. I have mixed emotions about that. First thought is it sucks. Second thought is it's great to live in a country where people are willing to spend 3 weeks living in a cargo container full of feces and risk their lives to come here.

Third thought for "progressives" who want to change America is why are no Americans going through the same misery to escape this "horrible" country to get to Cuba where there is free health care?

You have no idea how good you have it libs. Try living in real poverty. The "poor" in America have running water, cable TV, phones. They are so well off libs have to invent crap to worry about like there is too much fast food and obesity among the poor.

Send a lib food cop to a real poor country and tell them they can't have that Big Mac because it's bad for them. Then tell the oppressed citizen that they can't smoke either. Watch what happens. Hell, I'll pay $49.95 on pay per view to watch the beat down of that lib.

[Eric Blair 2084]

FWIW, I grew up in the rough and tumble streets of Outer Whitelandia in the suburbs of the DPRNJ.

All of my neighbors and friends in the 80’s were Chinese and Indian. They are all engineers or doctors today.

We had one kid in our HS, 9 years old, Chinese kid. He used to walk around the halls with his lunchbox. We thought he was one of the teachers kids. Then he sat next to me in AP Calculus. He was a student who came to the HS for math.

We all got 30’s on these tests which were thankfully graded on a curve. He got 100’s. Made us look like the idiots we were.

I read 10 years ago in the local paper that the kid graduated from Harvard Med School at age 21.