There were a lot of predatory loans going
around in the housing bubble.
And at this point, we all know that.
What I wanted to know was when there were
families who got these so-called NINJA loans — right?
— no income, no job, no assets, no problem
— or these loans that had these teaser rates
and then reset at a higher level, and you
were told, “Oh, you can just refinance,”
or the main character in my book, Sandy Jolley,
whose family owned their home outside of Los
Angeles for more than 30 years, until they
got a reverse mortgage that sapped their equity
— and all of these families lost their homes
to foreclosure.
What I wanted to know was what happened after.
Right?
We’ve been stuck in this country on this
trauma of 2007, 2008, 2009.
But now here we are in 2019.
Ten years have passed.
The unemployment rate is low.
The president tells us everything is great.
But people don’t feel like everything is
great.
So, you know, we have jobs, but what happened
to our wealth?
They took it.
That’s what happened.
And also, the disproportionate impact that
this loss of equity in all these homes had,
especially on the African-American and Latino
communities, which were even more dependent
on home equity for what little wealth they
had or net wealth they had.
What we see is that banks, like Steve Mnuchin’s
bank,
concentrated their foreclosures in communities of color.
And then, when they started making loans again
when the economy improved, they didn’t make
loans to those communities.
So they wiped out the wealth of these communities
with foreclosure, but then, over a five-year
period, Steve Mnuchin’s bank made three
loans to help African Americans buy homes
and 11 loans — this is national bank — helped
three African Americans and 11 Latinos buy
homes over five years.
And now Steve Mnuchin, as the treasury secretary,
is in charge of regulating every American bank.
And so, he and Donald Trump picked one of
his deputies at OneWest Bank, Joseph Otting,
for this position called comptroller of the
currency, which basically is America’s top
bank cop, who’s in charge of enforcing laws,
like the Community Reinvestment Act, that
are meant to stop redlining.
So, this bank, which didn’t make any loans
— hardly any — to communities of color
is now in charge — you know, this leadership,
under President Trump — of making sure that
these anti-redlining laws are followed.
