Mark Winston Griffith

Pride and Prejudice: Financial Services in Southeast Queens

Many in even so-called progressive circles are loathe to talk about the persistence of race-based discrimination in economic development in New York.

Witness last night, which was like many others in my line of work. As I was standing before a group of 200 homeowners and homebuyers talking about the perils of predatory lending, people were nodding their heads in recognition and affirmation as I explained the aggressive, abusive and often illegal tactics of high-cost lenders and scammers. They may not have heard the terms "predatory lending" or "high cost lending" before, but they sure knew what it looked like.

Like other evenings in which my organization, the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP) makes these kinds of presentations, most of the people in the room were people of color. In this instance, almost everyone was of African descent. What made this workshop more significant than most was that the people sitting in the room were solidly middle class residents of the section of southeast Queens known as Cambria Heights. Furthermore, most were members of the Cambria Heights Civic Association, a fiercely proud and active organization whose members are the very anti-thesis of the "victim" stereotype.

Earlier this month Sam Roberts of the New York Times wrote: "In Queens, the median income among black households, nearing $52,000 a year, has surpassed that of whites in 2005, an analysis of new census data shows. No other county in the country with a population over 65,000 can make that claim...Many [blacks in Queens]]live in tidy homes in verdant enclaves like Cambria Heights, Rosedale and Laurelton, just west of the Cross Island Parkway and the border with Nassau County."

Maps generated by NEDAP show a disproportionate rate of foreclosures and high-cost loans in Southeast Queens, a problem that some are tempted to explain away by pointing to the extremely high rates of one- and two- family homes. But NEDAP maps also show high concentrations of other kinds of high-priced financial services in Southeast Queens, which have absolutely nothing to do with homeownership.

There is indeed a color line in America and nowhere is it more obvious than in the area of financial services. It's about time policy makers opened their eyes to it and did something about it.

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Posted at 10:05 AM, Oct 13, 2006 in
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