January 19, 2009
By Dave Fehling
Despite all the grim news on the home-buying front, some Houstonians are still living that American Dream.
Sara Diaz is one of them.
“This was perfect. I think I was lucky to find this house,” Diaz said.
She just moved into a southeast Houston neighborhood, with some help from Gabriela Hernandez of the Tejano Center for Community Concerns, a non-profit group in the East End.
Hernandez got Diaz enrolled in a home-buying class sponsored by the Tejano Center.
“It gives them stability, instead of moving from apartment to apartment,” Manuel Lopez of the Tejano Center said.
Those kinds of programs seem to have worked, helping dramatically increase the number of Hispanic homeowners nationwide.
The increase is staggering – up 47 percent since 2000, often in neighborhoods previously shunned by lenders.
“We had mortgage brokers blossom in Houston in the East End, like Bluebonnets in the spring in Texas. It was incredible,” Lopez said.
But now, a dark sub-prime flipside has emerged for some of those homeowners.
It’s something 11 News has been reporting on for months: Homeowners burned by rapidly-increasing adjustable-rate mortgage payments.
“It’s very tough to see families in here crying their eyes out, grown men crying. They were tricked,” Hernandez said.
Some say the homeowners were tricked by unscrupulous lenders. But did those lenders have help from the very programs aimed at giving more Hispanics a shot at the American Dream?
Is it possible that those programs – however well-intentioned – actually ended up contributing to the financial crisis by qualifying people with low and moderate incomes for loans they could have never afforded in the past?
An investigation by the Wall Street Journal found that the rise in Hispanic homeownership nationwide was “fueled by a campaign by low-income housing groups, Hispanic lawmakers, a Congressional Hispanic Housing initiative, mortgage lenders and brokers, who all were pushing to increase homeownership among Latinos.”
The Journal said big lenders used national Latino groups to help market sub-prime loans to Latino homebuyers, some of whom are now getting hit hard by foreclosures.
Lopez, who helped found the Tejano Center, said it’s unfair to blame Hispanics as somehow more responsible than anyone else for the mortgage meltdown.
“That’s like blaming polar bears for global warming. Latinos and other minorities have actually been the victims,” Lopez said.
Diaz said that while she was shopping for a loan, a well-known bank constantly called her offering one she felt she couldn’t afford.
“There’s a lot of lenders out there, unethical people, willing to put someone into a house they cannot afford to buy,” Hernandez said.
Source: Texas Cable News
By Dave Fehling
Despite all the grim news on the home-buying front, some Houstonians are still living that American Dream.
Sara Diaz is one of them.
“This was perfect. I think I was lucky to find this house,” Diaz said.
She just moved into a southeast Houston neighborhood, with some help from Gabriela Hernandez of the Tejano Center for Community Concerns, a non-profit group in the East End.
Hernandez got Diaz enrolled in a home-buying class sponsored by the Tejano Center.
“It gives them stability, instead of moving from apartment to apartment,” Manuel Lopez of the Tejano Center said.
Those kinds of programs seem to have worked, helping dramatically increase the number of Hispanic homeowners nationwide.
The increase is staggering – up 47 percent since 2000, often in neighborhoods previously shunned by lenders.
“We had mortgage brokers blossom in Houston in the East End, like Bluebonnets in the spring in Texas. It was incredible,” Lopez said.
But now, a dark sub-prime flipside has emerged for some of those homeowners.
It’s something 11 News has been reporting on for months: Homeowners burned by rapidly-increasing adjustable-rate mortgage payments.
“It’s very tough to see families in here crying their eyes out, grown men crying. They were tricked,” Hernandez said.
Some say the homeowners were tricked by unscrupulous lenders. But did those lenders have help from the very programs aimed at giving more Hispanics a shot at the American Dream?
Is it possible that those programs – however well-intentioned – actually ended up contributing to the financial crisis by qualifying people with low and moderate incomes for loans they could have never afforded in the past?
An investigation by the Wall Street Journal found that the rise in Hispanic homeownership nationwide was “fueled by a campaign by low-income housing groups, Hispanic lawmakers, a Congressional Hispanic Housing initiative, mortgage lenders and brokers, who all were pushing to increase homeownership among Latinos.”
The Journal said big lenders used national Latino groups to help market sub-prime loans to Latino homebuyers, some of whom are now getting hit hard by foreclosures.
Lopez, who helped found the Tejano Center, said it’s unfair to blame Hispanics as somehow more responsible than anyone else for the mortgage meltdown.
“That’s like blaming polar bears for global warming. Latinos and other minorities have actually been the victims,” Lopez said.
Diaz said that while she was shopping for a loan, a well-known bank constantly called her offering one she felt she couldn’t afford.
“There’s a lot of lenders out there, unethical people, willing to put someone into a house they cannot afford to buy,” Hernandez said.
Source: Texas Cable News
