HUD Offers Minority Lending Data on Internet

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros unveiled Thursday an Internet site that puts nationwide information on minority lending patterns at the fingertips of mortgage market players.

Mr. Cisneros said the site may help increase minority homeownership. Although statistics released last week showed an increase in lending to minorities, they are still being denied mortgages at twice the rate of whites.

The lending improvement is "a beginning," the secretary said, but the rejection ratio "shows how far off we are."

The Internet site, called Democratizing Data, shows where loans were made in particular geographic areas by individual lenders to borrower groups identified by race, national origin, sex, and income. The site also can help a user search a bank's lending history.

The data have been gathered over the past four years under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and cover home loan applications, approvals, and denials from more than 9,500 lending institutions, including banks, thrifts, credit unions, and mortgage companies.

"We are still turning up instances where differences in lending were explained by race," Mr. Cisneros said. "This will help aim our strategy to those who have the greatest distance to move."

Mr. Cisneros said banks could use the information to guide minority lending strategies. The technology could change the way lending decisions are made, he said.

He praised banks for improved compliance with laws requiring community reinvestment. "We have conveyed that the best thing for banks is to get with the program, and many are," Mr. Cisneros said.

Banks can use the site for targeting unserved areas and developing new lending mechanisms, said James Griffin, executive director of Unison Institute, which designed the site.

HUD has spent $450,000 since 1994 on the project, Mr. Cisneros said. Democratizing Data can be accessed through the department's site at http://www.hud.gov.

Mr. Coplan writes for the Medill News Service.

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