In May 2020, a top loan officer at Fairway Independent Mortgage Company sent an email to a loan processor regarding a possible property purchase in Ensley, a majority Black neighborhood in Birmingham, that stated: “Ensley is a GHETTO. I assure you we do not have a house there. A LOT OF LAUGHTER!”

The Fairway mortgage processor replied, “ROFLOL,” which likely meant “rolling on the floor laughing out loud,” in accordance with a court document that noted the lender didn’t accept any loan applications within the Ensley area between 2018 and 2021 .

No one at Fairway Mortgage is laughing now, after a four-year investigation this week by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Department of Justice forced the mortgage lender to succeed in an $8 million settlement to deal with its alleged discriminatory lending practices, including redlining black neighborhoods in and around Birmingham.

Redlining is an illegal, discriminatory practice wherein lenders and other firms make credit and other financial services out of reach for people in certain areas based on race or national origin.

According to a criticism filed by each federal agencies on Oct. 15, Madison, Wisconsin-based Fairway, doing business in Birmingham as MortgageBanc, operated retail lending offices in predominantly white areas of metro Birmingham from 2015 to 2022. The company also solicited lending referrals from individuals and organizations in majority-white areas and targeted its marketing efforts at them, while ignoring majority-black neighborhoods.

As a result, just 3.7 per cent of the ten,247 Fairway mortgage applications reported to the federal government between 2018 and 2022 were for properties in predominantly black areas, compared with 12.2 per cent for other lenders in Birmingham, in accordance with complaints. Only 3.3 percent of the 7,913 mortgages Fairway actually originated within the metro area were for properties in predominantly black neighborhoods, compared with 10.1 percent from other mortgage lenders.

At that point, the Birmingham Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) comprised six counties in north-central Alabama with a complete population of 1.1 million made up of residents that were 62% white, 30% black, 5% Latino, and three% other races.

Such Fairway policies and practices constitute an override because they “were intended to disclaim and, in effect, resulted within the denial of equal access to home loans to majority Black (a minimum of 50 percent Black) and high Black (a minimum of 80 percent of the Black population) residents black) percentage of black people) residential areas and applicants for loans for properties situated in those areas,” argued the 2 federal agencies, which found that Fairway violated the federal Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the U.S. financial consumers.

The agencies argued that Fairway must have been well aware that it was not adequately serving majority Black areas because the corporate had been using third-party vendors since 2017 to review credit data to evaluate the danger of redlining in majority Black areas. and minorities. Those annual risk-mitigation reports “should have brought attention to Fairway,” the feds argued, but the corporate “failed to take any significant action to increase (loan) applications and originations in majority-black areas” in metro Birmingham .

The criticism also noted that piece of email between several white Fairway employees between 2018 and 2020 used offensive language in reference to majority-Black areas of Birmingham, “indicating a culture consistent with discrimination, including by discouraging applications.” for real estate loans in these areas.”

In addition to calling Ensley and one other majority-Black neighborhood, Tarrant, a “ghetto,” Fairway loan officers in a 2018 email chain referred to an African-American male loan applicant as having “thug friends” and wrote that “(w)e ​​don’t need him as a client. He is a burden waiting to occur. The black applicant withdrew his application.

The settlement announced Tuesday requires Fairway to offer $8 million for a loan subsidy program to supply reasonably priced loans for home purchases, refinances and residential renovations in predominantly black neighborhoods in Birmingham, in addition to pay a civil penalty of 1.9 million dollars to the CFPB Victim Assistance Fund. It has not yet been certified by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

The Birmingham settlement is the fifteenth settlement the Justice Department has reapproved in three years as a part of its settlement Anti-redlining initiativewhich has now raised greater than $150 million in settlements “to benefit communities of color across the country who have experienced lending discrimination,” including Houston, Memphis, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

“This settlement…will help ensure that future generations of Americans inherit the legacy of home ownership that has been too often denied,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “This case is a reminder that redlining is not a relic of the past.”

“This is good news for those looking to buy or renovate a home in this area,” George McCall, 81, president of the Ensley Neighborhood Association, told Atlanta Black Star in regards to the settlement.

“This is not a ghetto as they said. Our homes are not neglected or neglected, but many of the homeowners are seniors who have had a hard time getting loans to make needed improvements,” McCall said, adding, “I hope this will help more young people be able to buy a home.” It’s really hard for them to get financing for anything.

Eric Guster, an attorney and developer who grew up in Ensley and who recently built a $2.5 million shopping mall in nearby Five Points West, told Atlanta Black Star he hopes the settlement and loan assistance program will result in more homeowners in mostly Birmingham -Black neighborhoods.

“When people start owning homes, they take more pride in their homes, they become attached to their neighborhood, and that promotes social responsibility,” he said. “When there is no inflow of cash and investment, when people are disenfranchised, it is a faster path to collapse and decay. And that was what the mortgage company was doing, helping the decomposition process.”

Fairway released statement on Tuesday, denying that he participated in redlining and noting that the federal lawsuit was filed a day after the settlement was reached. He called the criticism “inflammatory” and said it incorrectly characterizes Fairway’s actions as “willful and reckless, a claim that was mutually denied by the parties prior to the settlement.”

In the primary half of 2024, the corporate ranked twelfth amongst the most important U.S. mortgage lenders, with $11.8 billion in home loan production. HousingWire reported. The criticism says Fairway is among the many top five lenders within the Birmingham area for application volume.

“Fairway has vigorously defended itself against the government agencies’ allegations and continues to deny that the Company engaged in any discriminatory conduct,” Fairway said in an announcement. “Fairway also maintains its strong opposition to government agencies’ legal and statistical approaches to identifying potential discrimination. However, to resolve this issue and reduce further expenditure of resources, Fairway concluded that a settlement with the Bureau and the Department of Justice can be probably the most appropriate solution.

The company said the settlement “gives Fairway the opportunity to redirect financial resources to majority-Black neighborhoods through loan subsidies, consumer financial education and community development.” Fairway hopes these efforts will further expand lending options for people seeking to purchase properties within the majority-Black census tracts of the Birmingham MSA.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – More North Carolinians turned out to vote on the primary day early voting this yr than in 2020, whilst residents within the state’s mountainous western part continued to get better from devastating impacts Hurricane Helene.

Preliminary data shows a record 353,166 people solid ballots at greater than 400 early voting sites across the state on Thursday, up from 348,599 on the primary day of October 2020, the State Board of Elections reported Friday.

As North Carolina’s population and variety of registered voters proceed to grow, Thursday’s voter totals as a percentage of the state’s current variety of registered voters were barely down in comparison with the share of the electorate 4 years ago, in line with data provided by the board. On Thursday, the share was 4.54% of the state’s 7.78 million voters, while in 2020 on the primary day it was 4.78% of the 7.29 million registered voters on the time.

The variety of ballots solid and voters registered Thursday is predicted to extend as county boards of elections proceed to report data, said board spokesman Pat Gannon.

Lines and packed parking lots were common Thursday at voting locations in densely populated Piedmont counties and the mountain region, where historic flooding has destroyed homes, roads and bridges and damaged power and water systems. The board said Friday it had not received any reports of great issues or problems with the vote.

Thursday’s turnout “is a clear signal that voters are excited about this election, that they have confidence in the electoral process and that the hurricane will not prevent North Carolinians from exercising their right to vote,” state board Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said in a message. release. Election officials said Thursday’s turnout likely benefited from clear, sunny weather.

Helene was the deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States since Katrina in 2005, decimating distant towns throughout Appalachia and killing not less than 246 people, with just over half of those storm-related deaths in North Carolina.

Although power has been almost fully restored in western North Carolina, tens of 1000’s of individuals would not have access to scrub running water. Still, all but 4 of the 80 early voting sites originally scheduled for the 25 western counties hardest hit by the storm were open Thursday.

“Obviously, any time something this cataclysmic happens, it’s going to disrupt people’s lives,” first-time voter Bill Whalen, 75, of Asheville, said Thursday, but “at least in my area, there’s a general understanding of the importance of these elections and how important voting is.”

The early voting period, which runs through November 2 in all 100 counties, is amazingly popular in North Carolina. More than 3.6 million ballots were solid during early voting within the 2020 general election, or 65% of all ballots. A voter can concurrently register to vote and solid a ballot inside 17 days.

Traditional mail-in voting began a couple of days before Helene arrived within the state. As of Thursday, greater than 75,000 ballots had been received from state, military and overseas voters, the commission said.

In addition to president, North Carolina’s ballot also includes races for governor, attorney general and several other other statewide positions. All seats within the U.S. House of Representatives and General Assembly are also up for re-election.

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Vice President Kamala Harris stopped in the course of a campaign speech to assure hecklers that they were on the “wrong rally.”

Harris’ campaign rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin, apparently went off with no hitch. As Harris began to talk about overturning former President Donald Trump’s nomination to the Supreme Court, she was interrupted by hecklers. Undeterred by the interruption, Harris took a moment to describe the stupidity.

“Oh, you are on the unsuitable rally. No, I believe you wanted to go to the smaller one down the road.

“Oh, you’re at the wrong rally,” Harris responds to hecklers. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/1ZOiZ6wYit

— Jason – 1st Streamer Brigade – NafoRadio (@naforadio) October 17, 2024

The reference to a “smaller” rally was a direct shot at her presidential opponent, Trump. the host often comments on crowd size and the scale of his political rallies.

In a speech at Mar-A-Lago Golf Course in Florida, Trump expressed disappointment with the media for underestimating the dimensions of his rallies.

“I recently hosted 25,000 people in Michigan. We just couldn’t accept them. We had so lots of them that nobody mentioned it. When it gets 1,500 people, I saw it on the ABC yesterday, what they said the the gang was so big. I actually have a crowd that is 10, 20, 30 times larger.

Weak Trump calls a press conference to lie and shout in regards to the noticeably smaller number of individuals attending the rally pic.twitter.com/yPb1GzH12J

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 8, 2024

Trump references crowd size so often that his opponents now use it as a way to mock him.

Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz mentioned the big turnout at an August 10 campaign rally in Arizona. While praising the turnout, he cheekily asked the gang if anyone cared in regards to the number of individuals in attendance.

“It’s not like anyone cares about crowd size or anything,” he added. @Tim_Walz jokes about Trump and the gang in Arizona, estimated to number greater than 15,000. pic.twitter.com/jJi902yn8H

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) August 10, 2024

Former President Barack Obama also joined in on the difficulty through the Democratic National Convention in August.

This comment by Barack Obama about Donald Trump’s obsession with “crowd size” was an actual punch – and it was pretty darn funny too! pic.twitter.com/JNjCYf4DXH

— urban myths, legends (@urbanmyths) August 21, 2024

There are lower than 30 days left until the 2024 presidential elections.