The chairman of the U.S. House Banking Committee called Monday for a Justice Department investigation into reports of racial disparities in loan rejections at America's savings and loans. Those statistics, analyzed and reported Sunday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, showed that blacks were rejected twice as often as whites when they applied for home loans at 3,100 savings and loans from 1983 to 1988. Hispanics were rejected 64 percent more often than whites. Homebuyers of any race in upper-income integrated and minority neighborhoods were rejected at the same rate as homebuyers in poor white neighborhoods.
Discrimination is reprehensible in any form.
It is doubly so when the discrimination is aided and abetted by federally regulated financial institutions. A Justice Department spokesman responded to the statements from Capitol Hill by saying the department continues the investigation it began last May after the Journal-Constitution published articles on discriminatory lending practices in Atlanta. Congressional leaders from both houses called Monday for greater scrutiny of fair-lending issues by federal regulators. The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Donald W. Riegle Jr. Also Monday, Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, a Massachusetts Democrat and Banking Committee member, introduced legislation requiring all four bank regulatory agencies to collect more information on approval and rejection rates by race.