Hispanics Face Wave Of Foreclosures

When the national housing market began unraveling, so did the fortunes of many of the new homeowners. National foreclosure statistics don't break out data by ethnicity or race. But there is evidence that Hispanic borrowers have been hard hit. In part, that's because of large Hispanic populations in areas where the housing bubble was pronounced, such as Southern California, Nevada and Florida.

In U.S. counties where Hispanics account for more than 25% of the population, banks have taken back 6.7 homes per 1,000 residents since Jan. 1, 2006, compared with 4.6 per 1,000 residents in all counties, according to a Journal analysis of U.S. Census and RealtyTrac data.

Hispanic lawmakers and community groups have blamed subprime lenders, who specialize in making loans to customers with spotty credit histories. They complain that even solid borrowers were steered to those loans, which carry higher interest rates.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[UtahLiberal435]

From the article: "National foreclosure statistics don't break out data by ethnicity or race. But there is evidence that Hispanic borrowers have been hard hit. "

"...there is evidence."

Newspaper code for 'we need another story about aggrieved Hispanics. Make one up.'

Sorry, nuthin' for you blacks, Asians, Somali or Ethiopian refugees. Your problems don't count.

It's all about oppressed Latino drama queens, 24/7.

Take this as an example:

"We the brown people of this continent are Native Americans, Indigenous to this land. Also, one third of Latin American people are Blacks, Afro descendants. We are not European exclusively, and calling us Hispanics is a racist attempt to delete our true identities."

Uh, not to rain on your PC parade, but if you want to try out some racism, try being black in Latin America. And an ton of Latinos are of Castellano Spanish descent - not American Indians, who they despise as 'animales'. Many Hispanics/Latinos/whatever, ARE the white upper class of Latin America. But once you cross the Rio Grande, poof, you're magically transformed into the oppressed indigenous brown people of this continent. Que miraculo!

For the most part though, CarlosQC, I agree with you that this is manipulated data, and that poor and middle class of all races are sufffering.

[harriettubman]

I remember that Asian reporter on O'Reilly, who also wrote a column about Hispanics causing this mess. Never mind the predatory lenders.

[jerrypl]

Join the crowd of Americans of all races, creeds and colors finding themselves in foreclosure. So what else is new?

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

[joceeco]

"Whites face wave of foreclosures" Where is that headline? Why does the press neglect Whites?

[harriettubman]

It's called BIASED reporting. That's why you never see any missing children of color saturating the news.

[CarlosQC]

I know this is about foreclosures, but I have to mention that this kind of news are manipulated data. How can you track a fake identity?

How can you track any kind of data, and make it reliable, when you are grouping people within a fake identity? Most of "Hispanics" are people of different backgrounds, different races, different ways of living, for goodness sake.

Hispanic is a wrong term to refer to our people. Hispania was a Roman province that included today's Spain and Portugal. Hispanic refers to people and culture of the Iberian peninsula, which is part of Europe. Most of Spanish-speaking people and their descendants in the US, are not Hispanics, nor Latinos.

We the brown people of this continent are Native Americans, Indigenous to this land. Also, one third of Latin American people are Blacks, Afro descendants. We are not European exclusively, and calling us Hispanics is a racist attempt to delete our true identities.

I don't believe in this kind of data, period. Foreclosures are affecting everyone in America, as long as you are middle class and believed in "the American dream"...

[brooklyncitizen]

We are mostly mutts though...so I can see why pinning down our true identity is not something Americans are good at.

[nomoredead]

A friends mother snuck across the border in Texas from Mexico 2 years ago and bought a house 1 year later in Southern California.....no money down.

[harriettubman]

There are true cases where this occurred but they didn't cause the economic collapse.

[drymartini1]

why do you have to bring race into everything?

Hispanics are facing foreclosures, so are blacks, whites, asians. either feel bad for everyone or for no one. but dont show selective racism

[Realtor n VA]

This article is VERY TRUE! When the market was booming all of my business was listing homes and I was floored to see what shady loans other agents were bringing to the table. I represented the seller and could not say anything to the buyers but it was there and people were taken advantage. Very sad for all involved.

[Erdgeist]

You can blame most of this on Bush who, essentially, legalized predatory lending. Here is the proof:

"Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative."

URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html

[Stud99]

I told you this economic mess was the fault of our immigration policies. Bunch of deadbeats.

[harriettubman]

Not entirely. It was amazing to see 20/20 do an investigation on this and see how predatory lenders convinced people to sign on the dotted line. People didn't know the extent of how much they would have to pay with an ARM. I wouldn't want that type of mortgage for nothing.

[RobinSeattle]

I think Stud was being facetious.

[rich misty]

There was an excellent article on Bush somewhere that discussed this... Basically, Bush wanted to get more Hispanics into homes as part of the deal to get their votes as a block.

Like every Bush plan... It backfired. Bush is a miserable failure.

[DFL]

LIKE I SAID BEFORE, THEY WILL START GOING BACK TO MEXICO AGAIN WHEN THIS COUNTRY STARTS RUNNING OUT OF MONEY.

[bokiluis]

Nice to see that you practice a--holeism with cap letters. Says a lot about who you are.

Pathetic!

[harriettubman]

Already have. I read where over a milion Mexicans have started to arrive in their country since the downturn in our economy.

[RobinSeattle]

Meanwhile, Mexico continues to deport Guatemalans who go to Mexico looking for work while then turning around and acting angry about our feeble attempts to control our borders.

[RJII]

let's hope Obama can fix this mess. stay strong everyone. we're going to have to pull together on all this bush mess

[harriettubman]

A historic election with a dam about to burst and he's the one chosen to fix it. SMH....