Housing discrimination continues to be a serious problem plaguing renters, homebuyers, and homeowners throughout America.
There were more than 31,200 fair housing complaints filed in 2021, the most recent year where data was available, according to the National Fair Housing Alliance’s 2022 Fair Housing Trends Report. That was the most complaints filed in at least 25 years. The majority, 82%, involved rentals.
“Housing discrimination is pervasive in housing markets across the country,” says Morgan Williams, general counsel of NFHA. “Discrimination is significantly underreported. It’s hard to get good data.”
In 1968, the federal Fair Housing Act was passed to make the rampant discrimination in the housing market illegal. It initially protected people based on race, color, national origin, and religion. Familial status, disability, and sex, which includes sexual orientation and gender identity, have since been added as protected classes.
This is meant to ensure that everyone is treated equally when renting or buying homes, receiving home loans or insurance, and having their homes appraised. However, people are still being denied housing based on their race or sexual orientation, and pregnant women are being denied mortgages.
The NFHA commissioned a report in 2004 that estimated that there were likely more than 3 million fair housing violations against Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native Americans in the rental and for-sale housing market. This didn’t include violations against other protected groups or in the mortgage, appraisal, and other facets of the real estate industry. When adding those in, he expects there are more than 4 million victims of housing discrimination a year.
Much of the discrimination goes unreported. Many people don’t realize they are victims or are unaware of how to file a fair housing complaint. Those who do often face an uphill battle in proving that they are victims. And some worry about losing their housing if they complain.
“It is a real problem in the market,” says Williams.
What are the most common fair housing complaints?
The bulk of the fair housing complaints received in 2021 were related to disability, according to the NFHA report. These made up about 54.2% of complaints. It was followed by race, familial status, sex, national origin, color, and religion. The report captured complaints filed with nonprofit fair housing organizations and government agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“There is still a tremendous amount of ignorance, as well as conscious and unconscious bias regarding people who are differently abled,” says Stephen Beard. He is an Oakland, CA, real estate agent with Keller Williams who specializes in working with people with disabilities. “Some landlords and other decision-makers do the minimum they can get away with.”
Some of the issues faced by those in the disabled community include being denied rentals because of the way they are perceived, not receiving reasonable accommodations for ramps, chairlifts, and closer parking spaces, as well as landlords not allowing service support animals. Sometimes light fixtures and countertops are out of reach for those in wheelchairs, or kitchens aren’t wide enough to accommodate a chair.
“There simply is not enough accessible housing stock for people with physical challenges, as well as bias against people with cognitive challenges such as autism or who have mental health issues,” says Beard. Many people “can’t find housing. If they have housing, they sometimes can’t afford to move or make their own homes accessible.”
Securing housing is also often a challenge for members of protected classes. For example, families might report that their landlords illegally prohibit their children from accessing amenities in their complexes. People of color are denied mortgages or charged higher fees for loans compared with white borrowers with similar financial pictures. Transgender renters report being evicted due to their gender identity.
“Housing affects absolutely everything you do,” says Marlene Zarfes, executive director of Westchester Residential Opportunities. The civil rights agency works on fair housing complaints in Westchester County, NY, which is located just north of New York City. “If you don’t have suitable housing, how do you get to your job? How do your kids go to school?”
In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Garret Flower from ParkOffice.
Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Garret Flower, I’m the co-founder and CEO of ParkOffice – the parking software for smart offices. I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost as long as I can remember. I started my first business at 15 and have progressively been getting more and more ambitious ever since.
Currently I split my time between New York City and Dublin where I’m managing the rapid growth of ParkOffice in both Europe and the US. We started out a couple of years ago with ParkOffice with a very simple concept – employee parking was broken and we wanted to fix it.
Our progress in such a short space of time has been really energising, we’ve developed an industry leading product which is trusted by 6 Fortune 500s and countless SMEs in 13 countries across the globe.
What problem does your product/service solve?
Office parking is dysfunctional on so many levels.
The end experience is often incredibly frustrating as employees arrive at offices to find parking lots unexpectedly full or worse, they pay for parking off-site and walk to the office through a half-empty car park.
The management experience isn’t much better, facilities managers often complain that managing parking is the most time intensive part of their job and that no matter how hard you try you will still be inundated with complaints from disgruntled employees.
From a community perspective, according to research from UCLA, every time someone sits into a car and doesn’t know if they have a space at work or not, they will spend an extra 800m cruising at their destination looking for somewhere to park. This causes massive traffic issues in neighbourhoods close to large offices.
ParkOffice gives a fully automated solution which allows companies to solve all these problems while also reducing costs and carbon emissions in the process.
What are you most excited about right now?
When you look at the figures there is almost as much space in the USA dedicated to office parking as there is to office buildings. However, in most cases, it is a massively under-utilized piece of real estate.
The average company who believes they don’t have enough parking space actually have up to 40% of their parking spaces empty during the working day. This is often caused by people working from home, being off-site at meetings or being on holidays. What a waste of space and money.
In a world where our cities are running out of space, I’m incredibly excited about how technology can be used to park cars more effectively, freeing up whole swathes of space for cities across the world to grow.
We’ve just adapted our product to tackle the issues surrounding COVID-19. Over recent years our key focus has been on supporting companies to reduce their employees car dependency.
With COVID-19 changing the business environment for companies all over the world, we knew we had to innovate to thrive. By altering our product slightly we can now help companies return to the office safely sooner. With public transport a no-go area for many people who are worried about the virus, employee parking is going to be under greater pressure than ever. Our automated solution can monitor parking availability in real-time and assign spaces to those in most need – think of it like hot-desking but for parking spaces. The beauty is that we can increase parking availability by up to 40% for companies.
What’s next for you?
The USA is a massive focus for us – we’ve been lucky to pick up a few big clients over there but we’re opening up a full-time office over there in the next 6 months to accelerate our growth.
What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?
Racism really angers me. I feel strongly that all people were created equal, and this world is unfortunately structured in a way which disadvantages swathes of people because of their gender and race. As half-American, half-Irish, I’m acutely aware of the disadvantages many of my ancestors had to overcome to lay the foundations for me to thrive. I’m always looking for ways in which I can pave a path for minorities to lay the way for their communities to flourish. It is my job as a CEO and a leader of ParkOffice to encourage an environment of inclusion to learn how to implement policies that will correct this inequality.
Thanks to Garret for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn here.
We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).
If there’s one thing that science fiction has taught us, it’s that you don’t mess with aliens. From intergalactic empires to ancient gods in hiding, extraterrestrials can often give as much as they get— if not more! Whether they come from distant galaxies or are right next door to us, alien species might have vastly differing tech levels and powers. Here we take a look at some of the most powerful alien species in sci-fi TV shows, movies, and video games: let’s all hope our future encounters with extraterrestrial beings prove less hostile than these!
1. Spiders and Snakes, from Fritz Leiber’s Change War Series
One user shared, “The Spiders and The Snakes from Fritz Leiber’s Change War stories. No human has ever seen any member of either race. They are fighting a war that is ongoing on all planets in the Universe, and that started with the Big Bang and goes beyond the end of time. Each side wants to rewrite all history in the entire multiverse.”
Another user replied, “Sounds like Xeelee.”
One commenter added, “Fantastic story that I wish had more books. Rare to get sci-fi with a theater production theme AND locker room mystery.”
2. The Q, from Star Trek
One Redditor shared, “I’ll throw two into the ring: The Q, from Star Trek, is effectively godlike, unconstrained by time, space, or the laws of physics as we know them. The Xeelee, the Baryonic Lords, are nigh-all-powerful. They utilized extensive time travel technology to populate the Universe with themselves, starting from the Big Bang and eventually escaping our Universe into others.
“(Their foes, the Photino Birds, defeated them—but they seem to have no technology nor the ability to travel through time. I’m not even sure if they’re sentient beings or more akin to animals—though the fact that they still formed the entire Universe to fit their life cycle and intentionally destroyed Boulder’s Ring seems to suggest the ability to plan and execute those plans, on a billion+ year timeline.).”
One user replied, “As dark matter beings, baryonic matter is just ants to them. It’s less ‘all that has to go’ and more ‘let’s get rid of that infestation.’”
3. Forerunners, from Halo
“Halo has the Forerunners. For an approximate idea of power level. They power all their technology with vacuum energy. They built a solar system-sized Dyson sphere that can be compressed utilizing an alternate dimension to about 1 meter in diameter. They built whole planets and moved stars.
“The flagship of their fleet, Mantle’s Approach, took two 2.1 million megaton kinetic impactor rounds that barely poked a hole in the hull that self-repair mechanisms fixed in seconds. Its main gun was ‘adapted from planet cracking siege platforms.’ They were masters of their own genetics, too, rewriting themselves into new ‘forms’ throughout their lives.
“With the assistance of advanced armor, they were biologically immortal and had no need to sleep. Perhaps their most “powerful” accomplishment is, of course, the Halo Array, a series of 7 10,000km diameter ringworlds capable of sterilizing the entire galaxy of life in an instant.
“Halo also has the Precursors, which predated the Forerunners. While their technology is primarily unknown, it’s been stated it is based on ‘neural physics,’ the concept that inanimate matter and thought are inextricably linked and that the Universe itself is a living entity. What relics they left were essentially indestructible, most notably Star Roads.
“These were many kilometers thick cables that stretched between planets and even linked separate star systems together. Described as being ‘anchored in the deepest layers of unreality,’ the star roads visible in real space were mere shadows of their exotic neural physics construction woven between dimensions,” shared one user.
4. C’tan, from Warhammer 40,000
One user added, “C’tan from Warhammer 40k is pretty busted. Each of them is connected to an intrinsic aspect of reality, and they have night-unlimited power, even shattered into fragments of themselves.”
One user posted, “Given that the old Necron broke and enslaved them, I’d say that War in Heaven Necrons are also absurdly powerful.”
Another user added, “Yeah, but the Necrons were only able to do it because of power taken from the Ctan and because the Ctan were weakened by infighting and the Old Ones.”
5. The Beyonders, from Marvel
One Redditor added, “The Beyonders from Marvel are pretty powerful. They were so strong. Doom needed to build a bomb of one of the strongest reality warpers in the Universe and reset the multiverse.”
Another user commented, “Not one of them; he used thousands of Molecule Men from different universes, made a ball with them, and detonated them all at once.”
6. Time Lords
One user shared, “Time Lords are pretty powerful.”
One user replied, “I’d say Daleks are superior; if it weren’t for the Doctor, the Time Lords would have been wiped out.”
“If it weren’t for the Doctor, Rassilon would have used the Final Sanction to rip the Time Vortex apart and destroy the whole of reality, which would have enabled the Time Lords to shed their corporeal forms and ascend into acausal beings of pure consciousness alone. However, the Daleks were indeed winning the Time War up until that point. Still, Gallifrey would have won the conflict if it hadn’t been for the Tenth Doctor’s and the Master’s interference in The End of Time,” another user commented.
One Redditor replied, “The Time Lords still have more power and hax at their disposal, just that the Daleks got the advantage with a surprise attack that made them immune to their go-to time erasure.
“After all, the Time Lords were holding back since, up until the end, they still wanted to save the Universe. They, too, could have built a reality bomb if they wished; they never dared to use the moment; they were gonna use the final sanction, and seeing how it was a time lord that created the Flux and the Daleks had no counter to that, they could have used that too.
“So, it was a combination of surprise attack, unwillingness to commit, and continuously underestimating the Daleks that caused the Time Lords almost to lose.”
7. Zeno Sama, from Dragon Ball
One user added, “Nah, they are petty insects. Zeno Sama can erase entire universes at will.”
Another user replied, “Was it ever specified whether Zeno belonged to a race or was he just a divine creature?”
“Well, he’s not from Earth, so he’s surely an alien. Divine or not, I think it fits the alien concept,” one Redditor commented.
8. Lovecraftian Creatures
“Lovecraftian, aka cosmic horrors, are pretty much unparalleled in power,” one user added.
Another user replied, “The outer Gods are technically aliens, but each of them is vastly different and hard to quantify as a ‘species.’”
9. Trisolarans, from Three-Body Problem
One Redditor shared, “The [trisolarans] from the three-body problems. Literally, quantum entanglement communication and the teardrop terrifies me.”
Another user replied, “I would actually give the other hunters in the dark forest an example.”
One commenter said, “Weren’t they the ones who destroyed spatial dimensions to vanquish their enemies?”
10. Species 8472, from Star Trek: Voyager
“Species 8472 is pretty [great],” one user shared.
A user commented, “I came here to say this. Any species that can force the Borg to make an alliance is a force to be reckoned with.”
Another user added, “One of the most interesting aliens from Star Trek, IMO. Especially due to the way all their tech is biological, like how their ships are basically animals. BTW, it’s not true canon, but the game Star Trek Online named them the Undine.”
One user added, “I’m surprised at how little treatment [8472] was given. The cannon is just tiny. I know the foreign-universe-ness and our lack of understanding of them is a big part of their charm, but I would love a deeper exploration of the buggers. The whole ‘fluidic space’ thing is left almost entirely to the imagination. There couldn’t be any gravity, obviously. How does physics work there? I believe they are the only species in their universe. Did they wipe everyone out recently, or did they evolve as apex predators without any prey?”
Do you agree with the names listed above? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Source: Reddit.
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Nearly a century ago, Congress created the Federal Home Loan Bank system (FHLBs) to promote home ownership and provide liquidity to thrifts (savings and loans) and insurance companies that primarily provided mortgages at that time. Today’s financial system is radically different: Thrifts are synonymous with banks; mortgage lending originates from within and beyond the banking system; and securitization has become the driving force for liquidity in the housing finance marketplace. In light of these systemic changes, it is time to reassess the purpose and mission of the FHLBs. Their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), has launched a comprehensive review.
The Brookings Institution’s Center on Regulation and Markets, Boston University’s Review of Banking & Financial Law, and Boston University School of Law co-hosted a forum to discuss and debate how the FHLB system is working, what its mission should be, and what reforms, if any, should be undertaken. We heard from a wide range of experts, including current FHFA Director Sandra Thompson, former FHLB regulators, affordable housing advocates, and leading academics and researchers. Here are four key take aways from the event, which can be watched in full here.
1. Are the Federal Home Loan Banks focused on their mission to promote housing?
The homeownership rates for white households was 75%, compared to 45% for Black households
Supporting housing finance is the original purpose of the FHLB system, but there is no requirement that members use FHLB advances to promote housing. Lisa Rice, president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance, described the mortgage market system’s problematic institutionalized preference toward white Americans, noting that mortgages were not “made universally available to people… [these policies] systematize the association between race and risk in our financial markets that is still with us today.” She called on the FHLBs and the broader housing finance system to prioritize reducing the racial disparity in homeownership. In the second quarter of 2022, the homeownership rates for white households was 75%, compared to 45% for Black households, according to the Department of Treasury. At nearly 30 points, the racial homeownership gap is higher today than it was in 1960. She cited small mortgage loans (under $150,000) and special purpose credit programs as models to be promoted.
Ms. Rice urged “bold,” not “incremental,” change for the FHLBs while Kathryn Judge, Harvey J. Goldschmid Professor of Law and vice dean at Columbia Law School, called this an “exciting moment” for rethinking the role of the FHLBs.
Panelists brought up the case of Silvergate Bank, a bank that primarily supports cryptocurrency actors which borrowed heavily from the FHLB system, particularly in recent times of stress, as an example of how the FHLB system’s focus has strayed far from housing. The conversation highlighted that the FHLBs focus on the type and quality of collateral for their advances rather than the purpose for which the banks use those advances.
Those advances generate profits and the FHLBs have long been required to pay a share of their profits toward affordable housing through the Affordable Housing Program (AHP) they administer. Luis Cortes, founder and CEO of Esperanza and a former member of the FHLBank of Pittsburgh’s board of directors, asserted that FHLB provisions do not go far enough, stating that the current rate of 10% of profits for AHP amount to “getting gamed by the membership,” given the value the FHLBs provide to their members. He stressed that the role of government is not recognized and that a 50/50 partnership is in order. George Collins, former chief risk officer for the FHLBank of Boston, agreed, citing an annual government subsidy of $5-$6 billion for the FHLBs shifting the burden of progress onto member banks. “I really think that it’s in the best interest of the members to jump forward here … because the members get a lot of benefit from the home loan bank system.”
Julieann Thurlow, president & CEO of Reading Cooperative Bank in Massachusetts and chair-elect of the American Bankers Association, raised another key purpose of the FHLB system: to promote community banks and their ability to lend and serve locally. She discussed the value FHLBs provide to community banks, stating: “It is foundational as far as a liquidity source.” The mortgage market structurally has moved toward commoditization whereby mortgages are originated by national lenders (often non-banks), sold into securities, and then serviced by for-profit specialized servicing companies. Thurlow pointed out the value that community banks bring, as individuals can “walk through the front door of a community institution,” not resorting to a 1-800 number. One of the many lessons of ‘08 Financial Crisis and housing market disaster is that just originating a mortgage is insufficient, unless that mortgage is sustainable, which requires adequate resources should the borrower encounter financial difficulty.
2. Are the FHLBs properly regulated?
Congress created the FHFA to better regulate the FHLBs during the midst of the financial crisis in 2008. FHFA replaced the Federal Housing Finance Board, whose former chairman Bruce Morrison, made the point that a government-sponsored entity (GSE) “…should not exist unless they have a clear public purpose, and they perform that purpose … it’s not good enough that they’re safe and sound.”
Professor Judge built upon this point, connecting the recent Silvergate lending episode to questions about whether FHLB regulation even considers what purpose banks are using the GSE subsidy for: “[This] might actually not have been a failure of supervision, which begs a much bigger question about the mission drift … supporting a bank that could corrupt the perception of safety and soundness of banking system generally.” She posed the question of how access to FHLB liquidity may have influenced the risk appetite of Silvergate. This exposes the tension between the FHLB system and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) as the ultimate guarantor of system advances.
“Total avoidance of bank failure is not necessarily a good thing”
The FHLB system is designed to provide liquidity for its members, but due to the FHLB’s super-lien priority over the FDIC, they can shift any lending losses to the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund when a member bank fails. Brookings’s Aaron Klein argued that total avoidance of bank failure is not necessarily a good thing, as some banks that make bad business model decisions deserve to fail. He cited a paper by fellow panelist Scott Frame, Vice President of theFederal Reserve Bank of Dallas, “The Federal Home Loan Bank System: The Lender of Next-to-Last Resort?” as evidence that the FHLB system acted as a lender-of-first-resort to some of the largest originators of subprime mortgages who eventually failed (or would have failed) during the housing and financial crisis of 2007-2009, IndyMac being the prime example. Frame commented that the regulatory problems remain, saying “The primary regulators don’t have any particular say, certainly about any specific advance or anything. This is a business arrangement between the members and their home loan bank.”
Former FHFA Director Mark Calabria, who helped write the law creating FHFA while a senior staffer for Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), noted the structural limitations of the current regulatory structure: FHFA regulates the FHLBs, but FHLB members are regulated by federal and state banking regulators and state insurance regulators. This was not always the case. Until the 1980s, as the prior regulator of FHLBs, the FHFA also regulated thrifts who were then the major members of the FHLB system (along with insurance companies). This raises questions of inter-regulatory coordination, particularly between liquidity lenders such as the Federal Reserve and FHLB, supervisors, and the FDIC as receiver of failed banks.
3. What reforms should be made?
Michael Stegman, from the Urban Institute, observed that considering executive compensation at the other GSEs may prove fruitful. “The GSEs have a scorecard where performance is tied to … mission-critical activities … we ought to think about how that kind of incentive … can influence compensation.” Klein agreed with Stegman’s idea on executive compensation. He added three ideas: restricting banks to membership in a single FHLB; a restriction on how much one FHLB can lend to a single member; and greater FHLB participation in supporting lending for projects that fill the gap between five to 49 units and mixed-use development. Dennis Shea, executive director at the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy, stressed that regulators should do more about housing supply. “This area of five to 49 multi-family [housing], which has been traditionally underfinanced, is a worthwhile idea.” Furthermore, on the issue of transparency, Shea asserted that a government assessment of the value of the taxpayer subsidy provided to the FHLBs and their members and the public benefit they provide would prove helpful.
“Regulators should do more about housing supply”
Megan Haberle, senior director of policy at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, called for greater regulatory clarity on advances, stating: “Not only tracking the advances, [but] attaching stronger strings to them … we want to make sure the advances are attached to that core purpose.” She also called for expanding usage of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) performance by the FHLBs as well as performance for first time homebuyer support, nothing that under current law many members of FHLBs such as insurance companies and mortgage businesses are not covered by CRA.
Mr. Stegman advocated that GSEs, should not be able to lobby, citing the $3 million spent in lobbying fees in 2021. He also proposed mandating member banks use the community investment program advances to support affordable housing initiatives. The myth of “zero public subsidy” of the FHLBs needs to be dispelled, he said, citing the six notches that the credit rating agencies ascribe to the implied taxpayer support of FHLB debt.
4. View from the top
In the keynote fireside chat, Boston University’s Cornelius Hurley interviewed Director Sandra Thompson regarding the FHFA’s review of the FHLBanks’ mission, as well as proposed recommendations for the future. Director Thompson agreed that member banks could do more to promote affordable housing. “They’re fulfilling their liquidity prong very well, but with regard to affordable housing and community investment … they could do better.”
Responding to Mr. Hurley’s question asking whether taxpayers are “stakeholders” in the FHLBanks, Director Thompson responded, “Absolutely,” citing the implied taxpayer guarantee of all FHLB debt and their exemption from paying taxes among the reasons. She also said, “The status quo is not acceptable.”
“The status quo is not acceptable.”
Mr. Hurley inquired about board composition and executive compensation, asking if FHFA can ‘pull any levers’ in the area. Director Thompson directed her answer about executive compensation to the forthcoming report and its recommendations, which will include both legislative and regulatory recommendations. Regarding compensation, she mentioned that she did not set executive compensation levels or ranges but that she has the authority to deny. She offered insight about what diversity in board composition looks like. “When we talk about diversity, not only is it just race, gender diversity, but it’s also diversity with some of the board members and their experiences,” citing an example about representation in districts that have significant tribal communities.
Next Steps: FHFA is continuing its listening sessions and roundtables and has invited comments to be submitted by March 17, 2023. The Review of Banking and Financial Law will be publishing further materials dedicated to proposals on FHLB reform. The call for papers can be found here.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
Northwestern Mutual’s Planning & Progress Study reveals Americans with an advisor are much more confident about their financial future, yet only 37% work with one Advisors are Americans’ most trusted source for financial advice – more than loved ones, friends, news, FinTok and Reddit While older Americans want an advisor with sophisticated expertise, younger generations … [Read more…]
Before we fire off the gun to start the ‘Compound Return Marathon’, let’s cover some basics on what compound returns are and why you should care.
What is compound interest? You probably became familiar with the term ‘compound interest’ when you first started placing money in your bank accounts. Most of us recognize compound interest as the interest we receive from holding money in a savings account, certificate of deposit, or other low rate of return investment at the bank. Any form of compound interest is great, but this post isn’t about avoiding depreciation in cash value by earning just enough to out-pace inflation with low rate returns (which is about all no risk interest accounts are able to do). Let’s discuss a different type of compound interest.
Compound returns When you purchase index or mutual funds, you are often asked what you would like to do with any dividend or capital gains disbursements from that particular investment’s holdings. When you select that you would like to ‘re-invest’, you are, in effect, compounding your returns. The same goes for dividend producing stocks. You are offered the choice of receiving your dividend in the form of a cash payout, or re-investing the amount into more stock.
Why should I care about compound returns? When fully harnessing the power of compound returns, you can save less, make more, and retire early. There is sacrifice. You will need to start saving at a time when many of your peers are getting takeout food every night, leasing vehicles they can’t afford, and buying all the latest tech gadgets. If you’re in your 20’s or 30’s, this post should instill a sense of urgency in you. If you’re a little older, you have some making up to do, but it’s not too late. Additionally, maybe there’s a young adult in your life whom you can help get off to a financial running start with the aid compound returns.
The Compound Return Marathon Let’s take a look at five different retirement strategies in the form of five hypothetical “marathon” participants (based on personas that we are all familiar with) and crunch some numbers to see who wins. Before we test the strategies, let’s take a look at the rules:
The average annualized rate of return for U.S. stocks was 13.4% from 1926 to 2000. The worst average annual rate of return for U.S. stocks in any 65 consecutive year period has been 8.5%. For this Marathon, let’s take the average between the two, and assume our participants are able to get a 10.95% return on our investments every year for each participant that invests in stocks.
Our conservative participant invests in a CD, which will earn 5%, compounded annually.
For simplicity, we’ll ignore taxes.
Everyone invests until age 67, the projected official retirement age in the future.
And now, let’s meet the participants:
Early Bird Bob: Bob didn’t follow the urge to blow his cash flow and ‘make up for it later’. He has decided to follow his own rules to utilize the power of compound returns. He invests $5,000 per year in domestic stock funds (earning 10.95% annualized) starting at age 20, and stopping at 40. Because he sacrificed early, he’s also able to stop investing 27 years before anyone else does.
Conservative Carrie: Carrie invests $5,000 per year in certificates of deposit (earning 5% annualized) starting at age 20 until age 67. Carrie sees the value in compound interest and has the right idea in saving early. She could get a reward for her consistency, but the fear of a market crash paralyzes her willingness to invest in stocks.
Live-it-up Larry: Larry invests $10,000 yearly in domestic stock funds (earning 10.95% annualized) starting at age 30. Larry discovered the power of compound returns after living it up in his 20’s, but regrets not discovering it 10 years earlier, so he is making up for it by doubling Bob’s yearly contribution amount.
Late bloomer Bill: Bill invests $20,000 yearly in domestic stock funds (earning 10.95% annualized) starting at age 40, until age 67. Bill has a high income job and is trying to make up for lost time with huge contribution amounts. He has downgraded from a Benz to a Lexus and cut back from three times a week at the golf club to two.
Mid-life crisis Melissa: Melissa invests $40,000 yearly in domestic stock funds (earning 10.95% annualized) starting at age 50, until age 67. Melissa spent most of her money throughout life to impress her friends, but since they all left her because she was too materialistic, she now has a load of time to make extra income to apply towards retirement. Is it too late for Melissa?
You can view the results of the Compound Return Marathon in a free Google Doc. Here you can see how much each participant was able to amass up through age 67. Additionally, you can see how much money they personally contributed to their retirement efforts.
Here’s how they finished:
Early Bird Bob contributed $5,000/yr. for 20 years ($100,000 total contribution). His nest egg at age 67 is $5,938,625.
Conservative Carrie contributed $5,000/yr. for 48 years ($240,000 total contribution). Her nest egg at age 67 is $940,127.
Live it up Larry contributed $10,000/yr. for 38 years ($380,000 total contribution). His nest egg at age 67 is $4,644,805.
Late bloomer Bill contributed $20,000/yr. for 28 years ($560,000 total contribution). His nest egg at age 67 is $3,168,398.
Mid-life crisis Melissa contributed $40,000/yr. for 18 years ($720,000 total contribution). Her nest egg at age 67 is $2,005,735.
Now that the race is over, let’s see what we’ve learned.
You’re better off starting late and taking risk than starting early and taking no risk. Being risk averse is dangerous in many ways. When looking at Conservative Carrie’s results, you’ll see that despite starting earlier than three other participants and investing every year, she wound up earning the least for retirement, in dramatic fashion. With that being said, starting early and welcoming a little extra risk can pay the biggest dividends.
Even if you start extremely late (Melissa), you can still drastically impact your future. Despite investing only 18 years, Melissa is still able to triple her total contributions.
Fully taking advantage of compound returns is your only opportunity to retire early. Take a look at all participants at age 50. Bob could realistically retire at age 50 and live off the interest, at least to get him up to retirement age and social security. None of the other participants stand a chance of retiring early.
Compound returns are pretty darn powerful.Early bird Bob contributed much less than anyone else, and stopped contributing at age 40 (27 years before everyone else), yet ended up with over $1.3 million more than any other participant. He contributed much less, quit early, and still wound up beating everyone else easily. In fact, he almost made 60 times his original return. Compare that to only three times for Melissa, the latest adapter.
The Bottom line: If you’re not maxing out your contributions as early as you possibly can, you’re falling behind.
J.D.’s note: As with some of the commenters, I believe the 13.4% average annualized return isn’t realistic. I used 8% for my own article on compound interest this morning. I’ll do some research to explore the notion of compound returns over various time periods, and share the results in the next couple weeks.
National Association of Realtors’ chief economist Lawrence Yun says home sales are likely to hit a 12-year high this year as builders race to meet demand for entry-level homes from first-time buyers.
While existing home sales are likely to remain flat this year, new home sales should top 667,000, which would be the highest number since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007, Yun said last week.
Yun also said he expects a change in U.S. migration patterns as many buyers give up trying to find an affordable home in the nation’s pricier markets, and instead relocate to more affordable areas. These people may be encouraged by a growing housing inventory in many U.S. markets, which has led to affordability falling in some areas. Yun said he expects this trend to continue for the rest of the year.
“While affordability has been sliding, it is still better than we saw in the year 2000,” Yun said. “This is due to much lower mortgage interest rates today.”
One reason for the improved affordability is that incomes have been rising at a pace that’s faster than that of home price growth, Yun said. He cited data from Sentier Research that shows incomes have been climbing steadily since a post-recession bottom in 2011.
“With strong job creation, wages are growing at a faster pace,” Yun said. “Finally, wages and home prices are aligning.”
The mix of new home sales will shift towards the more affordable end of the spectrum, resulting in a lower median purchase price, Yun said. He predicts that the median new home price will fall by 2.8% to $317,000 this year. Further, he said new home sales will grow by 7.9% in 2020 to 720,000 units.
Prices for existing homes probably will gain 2.3% in 2019, and 3.3% in 2020, Yun said. That’s a slower pace than 2018’s 4.9% increase.
Mike Wheatley is the senior editor at Realty Biz News. Got a real estate related news article you wish to share, contact Mike at [email protected].
We think we know what will make us happy, but we don’t. Many of us believe that money will make us happy, but it won’t. Except for the very poor, money cannot buy happiness. Instead of dreaming of vast wealth, we should dream of close friends and healthy bodies and meaningful work.
The Psychology of Happiness
Several years ago, James Montier, a “global equity strategist”, took a break from investing in order to publish a brief overview of existing research into the psychology of happiness [PDF]. Montier learned that happiness comprises three components:
About 50% of individual happiness comes from a genetic set point. That is, we’re each predisposed to a certain level of happiness. Some of us are just naturally more inclined to be cheery than others.
About 10% of our happiness is due to our circumstances. Our age, race, gender, personal history, and, yes, wealth, only make up about one-tenth of our happiness.
The remaining 40% of an individual’s happiness seems to be derived from intentional activity, from “discrete actions or practices that people can choose to do”.
If we have no control over our genetic “happy point,” and if we have little control over our circumstances, then it makes sense to focus on those things that we can do to make ourselves happy. According to Montier’s paper, these activities include sex, exercise, sleep, and close relationships.
What does not bring happiness? Money, and the pursuit of happiness for its own sake. “A vast array of individuals seriously over-rate the importance of money in making themselves, and others, happy,” Montier writes. “Study after study from psychology shows that money doesn’t equal happiness.”
The Happiness Paradox
Writing in The Washington Post last June, Shankar Vedantam described recent research into this subject. If the United States is generally wealthier than it was thirty or forty years ago, then why aren’t people happier? Economist Richard Easterlin of the University of Southern California believes that part of the problem is the hedonic treadmill: once we reach a certain level of wealth, we want more. We’re never satisfied. From Vedantam’s article:
Easterlin attributes the phenomenon of happiness levels not keeping pace with economic gains to the fact that people’s desires and expectations change along with their material fortunes. Where an American in 1970 may have once dreamed about owning a house, he or she might now dream of owning two. Where people once dreamed of buying a new car, they now dream of buying a luxury model.
“People are wedded to the idea that more money will bring them more happiness,” Easterlin said. “When they think of the effects of more money, they are failing to factor in the fact that when they get more money they are going to want even more money. When they get more money, they are going to want a bigger house. They never have enough money, but what they do is sacrifice their family life and health to get more money.”
The irony is that health and the quality of personal relationships are among the most potent predictors of whether people report they are happy — and they are often the two things people sacrifice in their pursuit of greater wealth.
Why aren’t rich people happier? Perhaps it’s because many of them are workaholics, because they’re more focused on money than on the things that would bring them joy. A brief companion piece to The Washington Post story notes that researchers have found that “being wealthy is often a powerful predictor that people spend less time doing pleasurable things, and more time doing compulsory things and feeling stressed.”
In general, rich people aren’t much happier than those of us in the middle class. Yes, money can buy happiness if it elevates you from poverty, but beyond that the benefits are minimal. So why do so many people believe that money will make things better?
Stumbling on Happiness
In 2006, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert published Stumbling on Happiness, a book about our inability to predict what will really make us happy. Here is is a 22-minute video of a presentation Gilbert made at TED 2004, in which he compresses his ideas into bite-sized chunks.
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Gilbert says that because humans can plan for the future, we naturally want to structure our lives in such a way that we are happy, both now and later. But how do we know what will make us happy? We don’t. In fact, we’re surprisingly bad at predicting what will bring us joy. Gilbert asks:
Which future would you prefer? One in which you win the lottery? Or one in which you become paraplegic? Which would make you happier? […] A year after losing their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives.
The problem is impact bias, the tendency to overestimate the “hedonic impact” of future events. Put another way, the things that we think will make us happy usually don’t make us as happy as we think they will. Winning the lottery isn’t a panacea. Having an affair with your hot new co-worker won’t be as thrilling as you imagine. And losing a leg isn’t the end of the world.
It turns out that humans are able to synthesize happiness. Many people look outside themselves for fulfillment; they expect to find it in things, or in relationships, or in large bank accounts. But true happiness comes from within. True happiness comes when we learn to be content with what we have.
13 Steps to a Better Life
What does all this mean to you? If money won’t bring you happiness, what will? How can you stop making yourself miserable and start learning to love life? According to my research, these are the thirteen actions most likely to encourage happiness:
Don’t compare yourself to others. Financially, physically, and socially, comparing yourself to others is a trap. You will always have friends who have more money than you do, who can run faster than you can, who are more successful in their careers. Focus on your own life, on your own goals.
Foster close relationships. People with five or more close friends are more apt to describe themselves as happy than those with fewer.
Have sex. Sex, especially with someone you love, is consistently ranked as a top source of happiness. A long-term loving partnership goes hand-in-hand with this.
Get regular exercise. There’s a strong tie between physical health and happiness. Anyone who has experienced a prolonged injury or illness knows just how emotionally devastating it can be. Eat right, exercise, and take care of our body. (And read Get Fit Slowly!)
Obtain adequate sleep. Good sleep is an essential component of good health. When you’re not well-rested, your body and your mind do not operate at peak capacity. Your mood suffers. (Read more in my brief guide to better sleep.)
Set and pursue goals. I believe that the road to wealth is paved with goals. More than that, the road to happiness is paved with goals. Continued self-improvement makes life more fulfilling.
Find meaningful work. There are some who argue a job is just a job. I believe that fulfilling work is more than that — it’s a vocation. It can take decades to find the work you were meant to do. But when you find it, it can bring added meaning to your life.
Join a group. Those who are members of a group, like a church congregation, experience greater happiness. But the group doesn’t have to be religious. Join a book group. Meet others for a Saturday morning bike ride. Sit in at the knitting circle down at the yarn shop.
Don’t dwell on the past. I know a guy who beats himself up over mistakes he’s made before. Rather than concentrate on the present (or, better yet, on the future), he lets the past eat away at his happiness. Focus on the now.
Embrace routine. Research shows that although we believe we want variety and choice, we’re actually happier with limited options. It’s not that we want no choice at all, just that we don’t want to be overwhelmed. Routines help limit choices. They’re comfortable and familiar and, used judiciously, they can make us happy.
Practice moderation. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. It’s okay to indulge yourself on occasion — just don’t let it get out of control. Addictions and compulsions can ruin lives.
Be grateful. It’s no accident that so many self-help books encourage readers to practice gratitude. When we regularly take time to be thankful for the things we have, we appreciate them more. We’re less likely to take them for granted, and less likely to become jealous of others.
Help others. Over and over again, studies have shown that altruism is one of the best ways to boost your happiness. Sure, volunteering at the local homeless shelter helps, but so too does just being nice in daily life.
Remember: True wealth is not about money. True wealth is about relationships, about good health, and about continued self-improvement.
Related >> Is it More Important to be Rich or to be Happy?
With exclusivity an eternal quest in wealthy, celebrity-rich Los Angeles, the owners of Crypto.com Arena have come up with a way to combine front-row seating with luxury suites for a select few who can swing the staggering price of entry. The golden perk: Holders will enter the arena through the same private tunnel used by players and performers.
Owner AEG just publicly revealed its “tunnel suites,” which are under construction as part of a three-year renovation of the downtown venue where pro basketball and hockey teams play, top musical acts perform and the annual Grammy Awards are held.
Tunnel suite holders will be able to attend all of those events whilemaking their entrance down the ramp used by the Lakers, Kings, Clippers, Sparks and artists such as Drake, Eric Clapton and Anita Baker, all of whom are set to perform this year.
“Ramp access is so golden,” said Michele Kajiwara, head of premium sales at the arena.
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And the few who arrive via tunnel will be the first in the arena’s 24-year history to gain entry to private special events such as the Grammys, All-Star games and 2028 Olympic competitions that are not routinely open to owners of other suites or premiere seats.
AEG declined to reveal exactly how much the new suites cost or even how much the company is spending to upgrade the sports and entertainment venue, but estimates reveal the sums are vast as AEG strives to keep Crypto.com one of the top-grossing arenas in the country.
When the Lakers agreed to stay for another 20 years in 2021, it was with the understanding that AEG would perform at least $100 million in capital improvements to the arena, which cost $375 million to build in 1999.
The makeover was designed by the Gensler architectural firm and sports facility architect Dan Meis, and has been approved by the Lakers and Kings, AEG said.
Among the most notable improvements will be the four private tunnel suites and four “terrace suites” slightly higher on the main concourse that are being carved out of existing premium seating. All eight new suites sit lower than the original 170 luxury suites that ring the arena, and are already being snatched up; AEG has sold five of them before going public, relying on personal approaches to people with the means to buy them.
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That translates to a long-term commitment to spend tens of millions of dollars. AEG said it has sold two of the tunnel suites and three of the terrace suites, producing a combined total of more than $300 million in commitments, or roughly $60 million per suite over the life of 10-year or 20-year contracts.
“There’s a certain cachet that comes with whoever is going to be buying these,” Kajiwara said, “because they want the best of the best.”
The pool of potential buyers is small, she acknowledged. “We are talking to private equity [investors], billionaires — anyone who can look at seven figures over double-digit years and not feel stretched to have to justify it.”
But having the money is not quite enough in the case of tunnel suites, which are close together and occupants are likely to encounter one another on occasion. AEG is screening buyers.
“You’ve got to have a certain decorum,” she said. “You know how to entertain, hold company and network in that kind of space.”
Bay Area real estate consultant David Greensfelder, who is not involved in the project, says the new suites are intended to arouse the sensibilities of people who are rarely gobsmacked by their surroundings.
“When you’ve got a lot of money that gives you access to just about anything, it takes a lot to have a where-the-hell-am-I experience,” he said. “That’s what they’re trying to do.”
Such reactions could be good for suite owners’ business dealings, he said, making guests “feel good and important” and encouraging “whatever celebrity to agree to play whatever role in whatever movie, or whatever Netflix series, or whatever investor to invest in the C round of whatever tech company.”
The tunnel suites will have a capacity of 12, with most of the space in their roomy private lounge below the seats and out of sight of the arena. If occupants want to watch the game live, they can take a few steps up to their seats to pop out in sight of an audience of thousands and perhaps television cameras.
“You will have total privacy and also high visibility in the most exclusive place that you can show up,” Kajiwara said.
Owners can stock their suites with their private wine and liquor collections, but food and alcoholic beverages will be provided at no extra charge.
The terrace suites are by contrast easily visible to the rest of the arena, luxurious dens for 14 on the main concourse. They come with tickets to all games, including playoffs, as well as concerts and shows.
Even though the arena has the advantage of being home to four pro sports teams, upgrading the aging venue is a necessity in the competitive Los Angeles entertainment market, said Lee Zeidman, president of Crypto.com Arena, the Peacock Theater and L.A. Live.
“You want to make sure your house stays the shiniest and prettiest on the block,” said Zeidman, who is overseeing the makeover, now in its second year.
A big competitor on the horizon is the Intuit Dome, a $1.2-billion showplace being built in Inglewood that will be the new home of the Clippers after they play one more season at Crypto.com Arena. The Intuit Dome will have lower-level suites known as “courtside cabanas” and “backstage bungalows.”
Other competitive venues include Kroenke Sports & Entertainment’s YouTube Theater in Inglewood that opened in 2021 near Kroenke’s SoFi Stadium, where the Rams and Chargers play football, the Kia Forum in Inglewood and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Zeidman said.
He added: “We compete against the Greek Theatre, the Shrine Auditorium, the Honda Center and BMO Stadium,” where the Los Angeles Football Club and Angel City Football Club play soccer and concerts are held.
AEG is racing to stay on schedule with the second phase of the renovation, with 90-person crews working two shifts a day, as many as seven days a week, he said. Cleaning crews follow behind to mop up the dust before Sparks games and other events.
“It’s a race to the finish,” Zeidman said. “We’ve got to be ready first week of October to operate everything” when the Lakers, Clippers and Kings return.
Improvements are taking place at every level over the course of three summers of renovation.
Along with customary changes — new jumbo screens, updated concession stands, a better sound system — the project will follow industry trends that emphasize “fan experience” over simply walking in and finding a seat.
At Crypto.com, that means eliminating the street between the arena and L.A. Live to create a tree-lined public plaza with music and big-tent attractions. It means adding a glass-walled Tunnel Club where patrons can watch players file out of their locker rooms.
More significantly, crews will blast out the upper seats at one end, creating an indoor/outdoor space called City Terrace where fans can mingle on a terrace overlooking downtown, then stroll inside the bowl to peer down on the court.
“We have so much entertainment, so much night life and natural activities in Los Angeles, how do you compete?” Kajiwara said. “You create something that’s special, that’s in the moment.”
Times staff writer David Wharton contributed to this report.
Gia Gray seems like a dream client for any bank: a well-off family doctor living in an exclusive Bay Area town, in a 5,000-square-foot mansion with a master bath bigger than my office.
With a credit score topping 800, she expected little drama when she and her husband decided to refinance their Danville home and two other investment properties in 2020 to capture some of the lowest interest rates in recent history — remember when 3% loans were a thing?
But after endless excuses and delays in her applications, “I started feeling Black,” Gray told me. Her bank, Wells Fargo, flat out turned her down on the investment properties, she said, and slow-rolled the application on her residence, coming up with new requirements as the process dragged on.
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“At the visceral level, I felt that something was not right,” she said.
Across the country, other borrowers have had similar experiences. Earlier this year, a federal court in Northern California, where Wells Fargo is headquartered, consolidated the claims of Gray and seven other Black plaintiffs into one case that may be certified as a class-action suit in coming months.
The lead attorney in the case, Los Angeles-based Dennis S. Ellis, says up to 750,000 minority customers nationwide — Black, Asian and Latino — could have been affected by what he sees as a pattern of discriminatory lending that left qualified borrowers denied or pushed into higher interest rates and more expensive loans.
It’s a form of modern-day economic redlining, he told me, that if proven true inflicted pain that resonated beyond the borrowers, many of whom lost out on a chance to save hundreds or thousands off their loans each month. It also hurt Black and minority communities as a whole, because it took away an exceptional chance to build generational wealth through affordable homeownership.
“Realizing the American dream of owning your own home is not just about having a safe place to live,” Ellis pointed out. “It’s about securing the future of generations that follow because of the incredible financial stability that homeownership provides.”
Ellis contends that the problem developed in part because Wells Fargo was short-staffed during the pandemic and relied on flawed algorithms and an automated system that may have had discrimination baked into it.
But it wouldn’t be the first time Wells Fargo was found to have discriminated. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice won a $175-million settlement against the bank, the second-largest fair-lending settlement in the department’s history, over allegations that Wells Fargo engaged in a pattern or practice of “discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in its mortgage lending from 2004 through 2009.”
The cities of Oakland and Philadelphia have also sued Wells Fargo for discriminatory lending practices; Philly settled its case for $10 million in 2019.
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Wells Fargo has been accused of holding fake job interviews with minority candidates for posts that had already been promised to other applicants, low-balling home appraisals and ignoring issues of discrimination that, as they come to light, may be harming the bank’s bottom line.
Wells Fargo has denied all of the allegations, including those made in this lawsuit. In a statement, the company said it was confident it was following all required guidelines and that its underwriting practices are consistently applied regardless of a customer’s race or ethnicity.
“These allegations against Wells Fargo stand in stark contrast to the company’s significant and long-term commitment to closing the minority home ownership gap,” the statement read.
It’s not just owning a home, though. It’s owning it on good terms.
Google tells me that a $500,000 30-year loan at 3% interest costs about $900 less a month than a loan at 6% interest — about $324,000 over its lifetime. For the folks who weren’t able to refinance, that’s money lining corporate pockets instead of paying for college or retirement or funding other investments.
The lawsuit alleges that in 2020, “at a time when millions of white Americans were able to take advantage of historically low-interest rates for home loans,” Wells Fargo approved 47% of refinancing applications from Black homeowners, 53% from Hispanic and/or Latino homeowners, and 67% from Asian American applicants. That compares with 71%, 79% and 85%, respectively, for these same groups across all other lenders, according to the lawsuit.
That same year, Wells Fargo approved 71% of residential refinancing applications from white borrowers.
Ouch, Wells Fargo. Those are some dismal numbers.
The lawsuit also alleges that federal data show Wells Fargo was more likely to approve refinancing applications from low-earning white borrowers than high-earning Black borrowers. Analyzing data from 8 million refinancing applications filed in 2020, Ellis and his team found white applicants earning less than $63,000 a year were “more likely to have their refinancing application approved by Wells Fargo than Black refinancing applicants earning between $120,000 and $168,000 a year,” according to the lawsuit.
The insidiousness of financial discrimination lies in how hard it is to prove on an individual basis — and in how hard it is to even believe it’s happening. The loan process can be so remote and impersonal — even more so during the isolation of the pandemic — that Gray and her co-plaintiffs were at first unsure if what they felt was really taking place.
Last week, Gray met two of those other borrowers in person at a news conference in San Francisco. I spoke with the three of them in a coffee shop afterward, but mostly I just listened, because there was a tremendous sense of relief and camaraderie as they shared how similar their experiences had been.
Until the lawsuit, Aaron Braxton, a Los Angeles homeowner, had been left wondering, “Are they doing this to everybody, or are they only doing this to Black folks?” he said.
Braxton was one of the first to file a complaint in 2020. A noted screenwriter, playwright and teacher, Braxton had owned his home in a historically Black neighborhood near USC for about 18 years and owed a fraction of what it was worth when he went to refinance his Wells Fargo mortgage. Like Gray, it was one thing after another, despite never missing a payment and having good credit. By the time Wells Fargo approved his loan, the interest rate had climbed and so had his frustration.
“I told them, ‘I am going to sue you. I don’t know how I’m going to sue you, but I am going to sue you, because I know I am not the only one,’” he said.
Gray was scrolling through her phone during the pandemic lockdown and came across a story about Braxton. “It was like a bright bulb,” she recalled, “and I said, ‘Oh, my God, this happened to someone else.’”
Christopher Williams flew in from Georgia, where he owns a home and rental properties. He worked in the financial industry for decades, so when Wells Fargo offered him a loan at 3 points higher than he expected, he asked why. Williams said the bank couldn’t give him clear answers, and he too began to suspect it was about the color of his skin.
Now, Williams said he wonders how many people there are who accepted loans at higher rates or with higher costs without knowing it. “How many of those loans and lines of credit are on the books of Wells Fargo right now?” he asked.
Ellis will be in federal court in San Francisco for the lawsuit on Thursday, the anniversary of the death of George Floyd. He says like the movement Floyd’s death set off to address issues of social justice, he hopes this case can raise awareness of financial injustice and its toll — which he considers the “21st century battleground of civil rights.”
“Just as we’ve cried out against policing practices that kill Black lives, so we denounce Wells Fargo’s racially motivated banking practices that kill Black opportunity,” said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is also involved in the case.
Interest rates are not as compelling as the tragedy we witnessed with Floyd, but Crump and Ellis make an important point.
This is a capitalist joint.
Until we all have the same opportunities to create wealth, we’re left with the oppressed and the oppressors, who too often get away with strangling equity under the cover of paperwork and algorithms.