Mortgage assistance program launches after 2022 redlining settlement

The assistance is capped at $10,000 per loan. Officials estimate at least 70% of new aid will go to people in Pennsylvania.

Kristen Clarke, at podium, of the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, was joined with (from left) New Jersey First Assistant Attorney General Lyndsay Ruotolo; Pennsylvania state Sen. Vincent Hughes; then Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro; Rohit Chopra, CFPB director; Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings; and Jacqueline C. Romero, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, during a news conference at Malcolm X Park in West Philadelphia on July 27, 2022, to announce a redlining settlement with Trident Mortgage Co.Read moreALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / AP

by Chris A. Williams and Dylan Purcell

Published Sept. 1, 2023, 1:43 p.m. ET

Millions of dollars in mortgage assistance is set to reach home seekers in Philadelphia’s communities of color and other areas harmed by the practices of Trident Mortgage Co., the city’s former top home lender.

On Friday, the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General announced that Trident had started to make $18.4 million available to support about 1,800 approved home loan applicants. Trident had settled following an investigation into redlining by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the attorneys general of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

The assistance is capped at $10,000 per loan and can include various means of support, such as reduced interest rates. Officials estimate at least 70% of new aid will go to people in Pennsylvania.

“This subsidy program will make a difference to many hundreds, possibly thousands, of families impacted by historic redlining practices in Philadelphia,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry in a news release.

The four-year state and federal investigation found Trident’s nearly all-white staff actively avoided issuing mortgages in underserved Black and Latino neighborhoods in Philadelphia, South Jersey, and Delaware.

Trident is a subsidiary of Chester County-based Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach. Of 53 offices in the region that Trident operated out of Fox & Roach offices in 2020, 51 were in majority-white neighborhoods.

“For too long, companies have avoided offering mortgages in neighborhoods that are home to predominantly people of color, denying them equal access to mortgage credit,” Henry said. “This is one small step toward correcting that injustice.”

In the practice known as redlining, banks and mortgage lenders unfairly deny fair access to credit, which has long harmed communities of color and targeted ethnic groups in the city.

An analysis by The Inquirer in 2021 found that nearly 100 years after the federal government oversaw the creation of racist appraisal maps, many of the city’s redlined neighborhoods continued to suffer from the effects of long-term disinvestment, poverty, and gun violence.

After the settlement was announced in July 2022, an Inquirer review of city property records and U.S. Census data found Trident’s loans in the city between 2015 and 2019 were clustered most heavily in Chestnut Hill, Center City, Spring Garden, Fairmount, Bella Vista, and Queen Village — neighborhoods largely white and comparatively wealthy.

With Trident no longer offering loans, the funds will be made available through two programs, HomeAssist and HomeAccess run by Prosperity Home Mortgage. The settlement also requires community outreach and related support services as well as Prosperity to open new lending locations in designated communities of color.