NEW YORK — A Pennsylvania mortgage company owned by billionaire businessman Warren Buffett’s company discriminated against potential Black and Latino homebuyers in Philadelphia, New Jersey and Delaware, the Department of Justice said Wednesday, in what is being called the second-largest redlining settlement in history.
“Trident’s unlawful redlining activity denied communities of color equal access to residential mortgages, stripped them of the opportunity to build wealth, and devalued properties in their neighborhoods,” said Kristen Clarke, an assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, in a prepared statement.
“I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘Vince, your dad gave me a mortgage for my first home when I was turned down everywhere else. If it wasn’t for Berean and your dad, I wouldn’t have been able to buy my home,” Hughes said. “We witnessed that discrimination in real time.” The alleged redlining activity happened between 2015 and 2019 — Trident stopped writing mortgages in 2020. Along with avoiding making mortgages in minority neighborhoods, the Trident employees made racist comments about making loans to Black homebuyers, calling certain neighborhoods “ghettos.” One manager of Trident was photographed posing in front of the Confederate Flag.
Hughes said he and other legislators were furious about revelations of the redlining by Trident and others in ainto Buffett’s mortgage companies. They pressed Shapiro during an appropriations hearing, and the Attorney General responded by setting up a hotline to gather personal stories. The Trident settlement also involves the first redlining case against a nonbank mortgage lender. Since the Great Recession, roughly half of all mortgages in the country are underwritten by companies that immediately sell off the mortgage to investors. These nonbank lenders include firms like Quicken Loans, Rocket Mortgage and Loan Depot, among many others.