Housing
What Mike Bloomberg Got Wrong About Redlining and the Financial Crisis
Comments about New Deal-era housing discrimination made by presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg echo a familiar narrative about minority homeowners.
At a Georgetown University forum in September 2008, then-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was asked about the major economic story of the day: the roots of the exploding global financial crisis. This was the month that Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy and the federal government had placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship. What was behind the bust?
Bloomberg’s answer: The implosion of the nation’s housing market was the result of the prohibition of redlining, the discriminatory practice by which lenders denied African-American homebuyers access to loans in the same neighborhoods where white homeowners lived.