On Our Radar

The Washington Post, March 3, 2023, Google Releases Civil Rights Review, Caving To Years Of Pressure The company disclosed in an April filing it retained a member of the firm, Debo Adegbile, “to inform our work and program development” related to equity, but did not reveal plans for the review until it was released Friday. …

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The Hill, March 3, 2023, Housing Affordability Hits Historic Low “Many millennials were able to buy homes before or during the pandemic homebuying boom, but many others were priced out of homeownership and forced to keep renting,” Marr added.  This was due largely to a combination of persistently high prices and surging mortgage rates, which …

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American Banker, March 2, 2023, Senate Democrats Ask Regulators To More Closely Monitor Zelle The lawmakers — including committee Chairman Sherrod Brown of Ohio as well as Sens. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Mark Warner of Virginia — in a letter Thursday urged the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit …

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American Banker, March 2, 2023, As Credit Unions Push For Diversity, Politics Start To Push Back Corporate culture across the industry is one of the main challenges impeding the progress of diversity, as many boards of directors tasked with succession planning aren’t selecting young talent to join the executive ranks over worries surrounding lack of …

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Reuters, February 23, 2023, U.S. EPA Unveils $550 Million In Environmental Justice Grants The Environmental Protection Agency will fund organizations, which could include large non-profit groups, tribal nations and universities, that will serve as grantmakers for its new Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking program that will invest in community-led projects in areas that have been …

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American Banker, February 23, 2023, Mortgage Rates Jump For Third Straight Week Although inflation is slowing, the pace of deceleration still has economists expecting further hikes in the federal funds rate this year, sending mortgage averages upward. They could head even higher over the next several days depending on results of upcoming data releases. “This …

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American Banker, February 22, 2023, Illinois Officials Unveil Proposals To Widen Regulatory Powers The measures draw on numerous ideas that have been enacted in recent years by Democratic lawmakers in New York and California, as well as by congressional Democrats. One bill would require digital-asset exchanges and related businesses to obtain a license to operate in …

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The Washington Post, February 22, 2023, Seattle Becomes First U.S. City To Ban Caste Discrimination But caste-based discrimination remains entrenched in society, and similar practices have followed the South Asian diaspora community to the United States and elsewhere, activists say. More recently, there have been efforts to bring attention to caste-based prejudice in Silicon Valley …

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CNBC, February 21, 2023, Wall Street Has Purchased Hundreds Of Thousands Of Single-Family Homes Since The Great Recession. Here’s What That Means For Rental Prices Institutional investors may control 40% of U.S. single-family rental homes by 2030, according to MetLife Investment Management. And a group of Washington, D.C., lawmakers say Wall Street needs to back …

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The New York Times, February 21, 2023, The Era Of Shutting Others Out Of New York’s Suburbs Is Ending For much of the 20th century, towns surrounding New York City used a stomach-churning mix of racial covenants and restrictive zoning laws to shut out Black Americans and others considered undesirable from thriving suburbs. The federal …

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Bloomberg, February 20, 2023, Wall Street Clashes With Green Bankers Fed Up With Oil Agenda The Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which is a sub-unit of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, faces a potentially embarrassing mutiny from some of the world’s most climate-conscious lenders after it decided against imposing binding restrictions on fossil-fuel financing. One lender, Germany’s …

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Urban Institute, February 7 2023, Why Did Black And Latino Homeownership Increase During The Pandemic? During the COVID-19 pandemic, Black and Latino homeownership increased more than white homeownership, with Black and Latino homeownership rates increasing by 2 and 2.5 percentage points, respectively, while the white homeownership rate increased just 1 percentage point. On its surface, …

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The Washington Post, February 17, 2023, Why does the South have such ugly credit scores? Today, we look at a big, fat map of credit scores reproduced from a recent economics paper. And while the map suggests any number of tantalizing questions, we are most intrigued by that big band of credit-score calamity that stretches across …

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The Washington Post, February 19, 2023, The Next Hot Housing Market Is Out of This World. It’s in the Metaverse. The twin home is in the metaverse — a catchall phrase for the growing conglomerate of immersive digital worlds where avatars work, play and purchase goods. Pixelated parcels of land are being bought, sold and …

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Axios Phoenix, February 21, 2023, Arizona Bill Aims To Ease Housing Shortage By Overriding City Control Savage says the legislature should instead consider inclusionary zoning that imposes requirements for certain numbers of affordable housing units, tax increment financing, or legislation similar to a 2019 affordable housing law in Utah that encourages cities to permit more affordable housing.