M&T Bank Busted for Discrimination but you can beat they are not the only

Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote an article for ProPublica titled “Housing Enforcement Group Sues M&T Bank for Discrimination” and reports within it that “The unusual lawsuit draws on secret videotapes and recordings to argue that the bank’s loan officers discriminated against blacks, Latinos and Asians who applied for mortgages.  One of the nation's largest banks discriminates against black, Latino and Asian homebuyers by offering lesser qualified white borrowers higher loan amounts and using hidden racial criteria in one of its loan programs, according to a lawsuit filed this week in federal court in Manhattan. The suit also accuses the bank of steering homebuyers to certain neighborhoods based on their race or ethnicity.  The lawsuit claims that M&T Bank violated the landmark Fair Housing Act, a 1968 law that sought to end discriminatory lending practices and limit the historic segregation of many of the country's cities. The suit was filed by the Fair Housing Justice Center, a New York City-based non-profit organization that is funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to enforce the federal law that bans housing discrimination.  Between 2012 and 2014, the Fair Housing Justice Center conducted a series of tests in which it sent out trained actors to explore whether white and non-white homebuyers would be treated differently when trying to prequalify for a mortgage. All followed a similar script, telling bank officers they were married with no children and were first-time home buyers. The black, Latino and Asian testers presented slightly better qualifications when it came to income, credit and additional financial assets.  In nine separate interactions recorded either with a camera or an audio devices, employees at M&T Bank's New York City loan office can be seen or heard treating the white applicants differently than the others, according to the suit. In one instance, a black candidate was told she did not have enough savings to buy a home. A white applicant with slightly lower income and credit scores and $9,000 less in savings was pre-approved for a loan. In another case, a Latina candidate was told she would qualify for a mortgage $125,000 less than the test's white candidate with lower income, poorer credit and less cash.”

Now this happens to be basically a foreign commercial bank allowed to operate within the United States but let’s not get it twisted.  The policies and procedures that they use are not those learned overseas.  No they are tactics taught by the very same patriotic Americans you see running domestic lending institutions right in your back yard.  They are the same ones in which you entrust your weekly, bi-weekly or monthly checks to safeguard only now they attempt to even charge you to withdraw your money and some have even tried to charge you for depositing money.  They smile as you enter but that smile only remains if you are not asking them to help you with anything even a car loan.  We wonder why so many bank-owned properties go abandoned and now we know.  I guess even this is still not as bad as what Wells Fargo has been accused of “Wells Fargo employees were accused of targeting subprime loans as "ghetto loans" for "mud people."  Now you figure out what color the mud people are.