Anyone falling through the looking-glass of fair lending has an obligation to know its history and context. Read the laws and cases . Become familiar with the academic and journalistic literature . More journalists, lawyers, activists and others are being confronted by the complexity of fair lending. Data have been released for the first time on loans to small businesses, farms and community development groups .
Legal challenges continue.
And we continue to have the annual, but limited, data on racial disparities in home mortgage lending . In this era of computer-assisted reporting , it's always a danger that we will forget what the data do not include. For example, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data , which show great racial disparities in mortgage lending and are used to flag lenders with a problem, do not tell how the system works. That information can only be found on the street, where we can see how the segregated market is perpetuated by minimum loan amounts , marketing , branch locations and hours , rules of the secondary market , cultural differences, mortgage insurance requirements, property appraisal practices, and other factors. Talk to homebuyers, loan officers, underwriters and activists .