Toplines; Lending Inequities.(Company Business and Marketing)

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) claims that racial discrimination still exists in mortgage lending and that couples with identical needs who give lenders similar incomes and credit histories are more likely to qualify if they are white. African Americans were turned down for conventional mortgages twice as often as whites in 1998. Lenders acknowledge that race issues remain to be addressed but say high denial rates among minorities simply reflect discrimination in society at large; African Americans tend to have less education than whites and hence lower av