50 years after the federal Fair Housing Act banned racial discrimination in lending, African-Americans and Latinos continue to be routinely denied conventional mortgage loans at rates far higher than their white counterparts.

This modern-day redlining persisted in 61 metro areas even when controlling for applicants’ income, loan amount, and neighborhood, according to a mountain of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act records analyzed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

The analysis showed black applicants were turned away at significantly higher rates than whites in 48 cities, Latinos in 25, Asians in nine, and Native Americans in three.

The yearlong analysis, based on 31 million records, relied on techniques used by leading academics, the Federal Reserve, and the Department of Justice to identify lending disparities.

It found a pattern of troubling denials for people of color across the country, including in major metropolitan areas.

The disproportionate denials and limited anti-discrimination enforcement help explain why the homeownership gap between whites and African-Americans, which had been shrinking since the 1970s, has exploded since the housing bust. It is now wider than it was during the Jim Crow era.

Read the full article on discriminatory lending by Aaron Glantz and Emmanuel Martinez at GOOD Magazine