Examining discrimination in home improvement financing (Home Mortgage Disclosure Act 2012–2016) and neighborhood health in the United States
Name
Examining discrimination in home improvement financing Home Mortgage Disclosure Act 2012 2016 and neighborhood health in the United States.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.62 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
b04f006d37ebbc524e99cd73dd865fe3
Author(s)
Davis, Brigette A.
Arcaya, Mariana C.
Williams, David R.
Metzger, Molly
Krieger, Nancy
Date Issued
October 20, 2023
Journal
Cities & Health
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Citation
Davis, B. A., Arcaya, M. C., Williams, D. R., Metzger, M., & Krieger, N. (2023). Examining discrimination in home improvement financing (Home Mortgage Disclosure Act 2012–2016) and neighborhood health in the United States. Cities & Health, 7(6), 1029–1044.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Institutional racism by financial institutions historically denied Black homeowners access to home mortgage loans. An understudied aspect of the homeownership continuum is home repair and maintenance, with few studies assessing discrimination in access to funding for home improvement. Using US Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data between 2012 and 2016, we assess individual and census-tract level predictors of applying to, and being denied home improvement loans. We find non-Hispanic Black applicants are significantly more likely to be denied loans (OR: 2.28 p < 0.01), and that loans for areas with a high proportion of non-Hispanic Black residents (OR: 1.09, p < 0.01) are most likely to be denied, while applications in tracts with the highest proportion of non-Hispanic white residents (OR: 0.90, p < 0.01) are least likely to be denied. We find that white (r = 0.203), but not Black (r = 0.02) home improvement applications are correlated with the proportion of Black residents currently residing in the census tract. Additionally, at the census tract level, home improvement loan denial rates are associated with usually getting less than 7 hours of sleep, which is associated with adverse health outcomes. Future research on institutional racism should consider the social and health impacts of discrimination in home improvement loan financing for Black applicants and within Black communities.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2023.2260188
