One month after the Biden administration announced its $86 million five-point plan to combat racial discrimination in the lending and appraisal industries, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has released its own equity action plan that outlines how the department will enforce Biden’s agenda.
One month after the Biden administration announced its $86 million five-point plan to combat racial discrimination in the lending and appraisal industries, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has released its own equity action plan that outlines how the department will enforce Biden’s agenda.
“It’s just important that the public understands that people of color, especially Black people, lose billions of dollars annually because their property is undervalued,” HUD Secretary Fudge told theGrio on Thursday. “If we could just make the market fair, Black people would accumulate so much more equity in their homes that they would really have a big nest egg to leave.”
Secretary Marcia Fudge | Credit: LinkedIn
“So what we have done is decided that it is important for us to expose the bias in the market and to make recommendations as to how we change it,” she added.
The 18-page plan focuses on addressing disparities in fair housing and civil rights resources, homeownership and homelessness through more funding for state, local and private fair housing organizations, improving the Federal Housing Administration’s efficiency, supporting and increasing access to non-traditional lending options, and crafting specific solutions for various homeless populations in cities, suburbs, rural areas and tribal lands.
The equity action plan also highlighted racial discrimination in the appraisal process, which has become a headline-making issue throughout the pandemic as minority homesellers — especially Black homesellers — highlighted rampant under appraisals.
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