Mortgage crisis has civil rights concerns

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Renita Jablonski: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will hold a meeting today to examine civil rights issues as they relate to the mortgage crisis. Ashley Milne-Tyte has that story.

Ashley Milne-Tyte: Reports show minority homebuyers, particularly African-Americans, are more likely to be in foreclosure than whites. Many observers say it’s because they were pushed to sign up for mortgages they couldn’t afford.

Jim Carr is chief operating officer of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. He’ll be at today’s meeting. He wants such practices to end, and he’s concerned the current spate of bank mergers could be a missed opportunity.

Jim Carr: With this economic crisis that we’ve been dealing with, bank mergers have been happening left and right without public hearing. And that’s the one major time when civic leaders have an opportunity to ask, are the banks doing the right thing?

By the right thing he means lending sensibly. He says some new regulations need to go into effect quickly, or when the economy recovers a whole new cycle of wild lending could begin.

I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.