ohio-headquarters Park National Bank will pay $9 million under an agreement with US Department of Justice (DOJ) to resolve allegations of discrimination against black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Columbus area.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The complaint, filed in federal court last month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, alleges that Parks National at least 2015 to 2021 will reduce mortgage debt by redrawing majority-black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Columbus area. Failed to provide services.
Redlining is an illegal practice in which lenders avoid providing loan services to individuals living in communities of color because of the race, color or national origin of residents in those communities.
Specifically, the complaint alleged that all of Parks National’s branches and mortgage lenders in the Columbus area were concentrated in majority-white neighborhoods.
“When banks fail to provide equal access to lending services in neighborhoods of color, they engage in compounding and exacerbating the racial wealth gap in our country,” said Kristen Clark, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Are.” statement.
The DOJ also claims that the bank failed to take any meaningful steps to compensate for its lack of physical presence in majority-Black and Hispanic communities.
Under the proposed consent order, Park agreed to invest at least $7.75 million in the National Loan Subsidy Fund to increase access to credit for home mortgages, improvement and refinance loans, as well as home equity loans and lines of credit Accessible-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Columbus area.
Ohio Bank will invest $750,000 in outreach, advertising, consumer financial education and debt counseling activities. It will also allocate $500,000 to go toward developing community partnerships to provide services that expand access to residential mortgage loans for residents of majority-Black and Hispanic communities.
Parks National Bank did not respond to requests for comment.
The Justice Department launched an initiative to combat redlining in October 2021, and since then the department has announced six redlining cases and settlements. In total, the DOJ secured $84 million in relief for Black communities across the country who have been victims of discrimination in lending.
The $31 million settlement with the California headquarters was the largest settlement in DOJ history. City National Bank. The bank was accused of the illegal practice of avoiding the provision of mortgage services to majority-black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
According to the DOJ, City National opened only one branch in a majority-black and Hispanic neighborhood in Los Angeles from 2017 to 2020, compared to 11 in other neighborhoods, and did not employ an employee to sell mortgage loans at that branch.
