A new study shows banks are doing a better job of maintaining foreclosed homes in white neighborhoods than in neighborhoods of color. Lewis Wallace of member station WSYO in Yellow Springs reports.
The National Fair Housing Alliance worked with groups in 29 metro areas including Dayton and Toledo to inspect thousands of bank-owned homes.
What they saw was disturbing, says Jim McCarthy with Miami Valley Fair Housing.
JM: Properties in neighborhoods of color were neglected, they didn’t have the grass trimmed, they didn’t have trashed picked up and the were not properly marketed.
Banks and lenders appeared to be maintaining properties in white neighborhoods much better, and working harder to sell them. In Dayton, buildings with damaged exteriors, broken or boarded doors, and messed-up utilities were concentrated on the largely-Black west side.
McCarthy says it’s a double-whammy after the housing crisis hit hard in the same areas.
JM: Generations of wealth have been stripped out of the neighborhoods.
These uneven practices have been the subject of at least one settlement—Wells Fargo paid out 42 million dollars last year in response to a federal investigation into the issue. But U.S. Bank and Bank of America have disputed the claims, saying they aren’t legally responsible for many of the properties in question. In a statement, US Bank says it has a strong process for maintaining properties it has access to, quote “regardless of their location.”