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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) took action to end Berkshire Hathaway’s Trident Mortgage Company’s intentional discrimination against families living in majority-minority neighborhoods in the greater Philadelphia area.
The CFPB and DOJ allege Trident redlined majority-minority neighborhoods through its marketing, sales, and hiring actions. Specifically, Trident’s actions discouraged prospective applicants from applying for mortgage and refinance loans in the greater Philadelphia area’s majority-minority neighborhoods. If entered by the court, the settlement, among other things, would require Trident to pay a $4 million civil penalty to the CFPB to use for the CFPB’s victims’ relief fund. The Attorneys General of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware also finalized concurrent actions.
“Trident illegally redlined neighborhoods in the Philadelphia area, excluding qualified families seeking to own a home,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “With housing costs so high, it is critical that illegal discrimination does not put homeownership even further out of reach.”
“Last fall, I announced the Department’s Combatting Redlining Initiative and promised that we would mobilize resources to make fair access to credit a reality in underserved neighborhoods across our country,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “As demonstrated by today’s historic announcement, we are increasing our coordination with federal financial regulatory agencies and state Attorneys General to combat the modern-day redlining that has unlawfully plagued communities of color.”
“This settlement is a stark reminder that redlining is not a problem from a bygone era. Trident’s unlawful redlining activity denied communities of color equal access to residential mortgages, stripped them of the opportunity to build wealth and devalued properties in their neighborhoods,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This settlement ensures that significant lending resources will be infused into neighborhoods of color in and around Philadelphia that have historically experienced racial discrimination. Along with our federal and state law enforcement partners, we are sending a powerful message to lenders that they will be held accountable when they run afoul of our fair lending laws.”
Trident Mortgage Company is a limited partnership incorporated in Delaware. Trident is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fox & Roach LP, which is owned by Home Services of America, Inc. The ultimate holding company of Trident is Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.
Until it stopped accepting mortgage loan applications in 2021, Trident was a non-depository mortgage company operating in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Trident’s lending focus was first mortgage loans and refinancing home loans. Between 2015 and 2017, about 80% of Trident’s mortgage applications came from the Philadelphia Metropolitan Statistical Area (referred to as the Philadelphia MSA.) The Philadelphia MSA includes the cities of Philadelphia, PA, Camden, NJ, and Wilmington, DE, as well as Cecil County, MD.
The complaint describes how Trident redlined majority-minority neighborhoods in the Philadelphia MSA and actively discouraged applications from the people living in those neighborhoods. Trident’s self-defined market areas included majority-minority neighborhoods. However, Trident’s application data show it did not serve neighborhoods within its market areas equally. Only 12% of its mortgage loan applications came from majority-minority neighborhoods, even though more than a quarter of neighborhoods in the Philadelphia MSA are majority-minority. Of the mortgage loan applications Trident did receive from applicants in majority-minority neighborhoods, most of the applicants were white. For example, in Philadelphia MSA neighborhoods that were more than 80% minority, more than half of the applications Trident generated were from white applicants.
Trident’s discriminatory actions, alleged by the CFPB and the DOJ, violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Consumer Financial Protection Act. The DOJ also alleged a violation of the Fair Housing Act. Specifically, the government’s investigation uncovered a wide range of problematic conduct by Trident, such as:
- Distributing racist language and messages about certain neighborhoods: Trident’s loan officers, assistants, and other employees received and distributed e-mails containing racial slurs and racist content. In addition to using racist tropes and terms, communications sent on work e-mails included pejorative content specifically related to real estate properties’ locations and appraisals. The racist content also targeted the people living in majority-minority neighborhoods.
- Avoiding sending its loan officers to market to majority-minority neighborhoods: Trident’s loan officers worked out of 53 different offices in the Philadelphia MSA, the locations of which were displayed on Trident’s website. Fifty-one of those offices were in majority-white neighborhoods. The other two offices were in neighborhoods with minority groups representing roughly 50% of the population. All 23 offices within the Philadelphia and Camden metropolitan areas that were within Trident’s lending area were in majority-white neighborhoods.
- Developing marketing campaigns and advertisements that discouraged and ignored minority mortgage loan applicants: For example, between 2015 and May 2018, Trident conducted 15 direct mail marketing campaigns. All the individuals pictured in the campaigns’ marketing materials—both models and Trident employees—appeared to be white. These direct mail marketing campaigns would have discouraged applicants from majority-minority neighborhoods. Additionally, Trident targeted its marketing materials to majority-white neighborhoods. Trident’s open house flyers, for instance, were overwhelmingly concentrated in majority-white neighborhoods, and its online advertisements appeared for home listings overwhelmingly located in majority-white neighborhoods.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell a stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of