GSE Not Doing Enough?

By Alan Mallach

A Texas nonprofit says Fannie Mae doesn’t serve enough people who are low-income and of color in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. After four years of research, the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service found that the government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) buys more single-family mortgage loans for white and upper-income families than other race and income groups. Fannie Mae’s share of loans purchased for African-American and Latino borrowers in the region was 33 percent in 2000. Many people of color who can’t get bank loans supported by Fannie Mae are forced to borrow from subprime lenders at higher interest rates. However, the GSE did serve as many low- and moderate-income people in 2000 as HUD requires, and the GSE doesn’t have to take borrowers’ race into account. (www.texashousing.org)

Alan Mallach, senior fellow of the National Housing Institute, is the author of many works on housing and planning, including Bringing Buildings Back and Building a Better Urban Future: New Directions for Housing Policies in Weak Market Cities. He served as director of housing and economic development for Trenton, N.J. from 1990 to 1999.

Published by the National Housing Institute