H.Con.Res. 391 (110^th): Recognizing the disparities that are associated with predatory lending abuses in minority communities and expressing the sense of the Congress that as new abuses continue to emerge, such laws should ensure that all those responsible for representing and protecting families have the authority to act to address these new problems.

Whereas minorities have a long history of rejection by prime-rate lenders;

Whereas subprime mortgages are typically offered to borrowers who do not meet the credit standards for borrowing in the prime market and these loans cater to people with blemished credit records or little experience with debt;

Whereas inadequate attention has been paid to the concentration of these mortgages in neighborhoods that are largely African-American, Latino, or both;

Whereas some of the biggest lenders in minority neighborhoods are mortgage companies that provide only subprime mortgages, not full-service banks that do a range of lending;

Whereas a 2006 study by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), a nonprofit home ownership research group, concludes that African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to be steered into high-risk subprime mortgages;

Whereas advocacy groups say poor and minority borrowers who qualify for traditional mortgages are frequently nevertheless steered into mortgages that reset automatically to much higher interest rates after a short teaser period resulting in payment increases of hundreds of dollars each month;

Whereas these subprime mortgages are characterized by low introductory interest rates, usually for the first 2 or 3 years and these rates frequently rise rapidly in subsequent years;

Whereas African-Americans and Latinos are getting charged for more expensive mortgage loans than White borrowers, even when they have equal credit histories;

Whereas a nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating abusive financial practices examined 50,000 mortgages and discovered that the two minority groups were almost a third more likely to pay more for a loan than similarly situated White borrowers;

Whereas the Center for Community Change reports that African-American and Latino borrowers are more likely to recieve subprime loans than White borrowers;

Whereas Harvard Law School Professor Howell Jackson has conducted research demonstrating racial disparities in loan costs due to yield-spread premiums;

Whereas Professor Jackson’s research has concluded that African-Americans pay an additional up front charge averaging $474 per loan, while Latinos pay an average additional $580 per loan on average;

Whereas other causes of pricing disparities may include the inconsistent application of objective pricing criteria, targeting of families of color by higher rate lenders or brokers, and lack of investment by lower cost lenders in minority communities;

Whereas information from the United States Federal Reserve demonstrates that African-Americans are 3.2 times more likely to receive a subprime loan than White borrowers;

Whereas in 2007, the number of homeowners defaulting on subprime mortgages began to soar;

Whereas it is estimated that as many as 2,200,000 households are at risk of defaulting on their subprime loans and losing their homes;

Whereas minorities are facing foreclosure or losing their homes disproportionately; and

Whereas Latino civil rights organizations say that this discrimination affects the large wave of first-time and first-generation Latino home buyers who are showing up in the housing market: Now, therefore, be it