Despite years of efforts to put minority home buyers on an even keel with their white counterparts, lending disparities between the races not only haven't improved, they've actually worsened, a group of community activists charged this week.

In a report that studied the latest federal data, the Chicago-based Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now said that on a national basis, African Americans applying for conventional home loans last year were 2.31 times more likely to be rejected than whites and Latinos were turned away 1.53 times more often than whites.

In both cases, ACORN said, the deviations were greater last year than the year before.

Blacks were spurned in their efforts to obtain conventional mortgages at a 2.07 greater rate than whites in 2000; Latinos were rejected at a rate that was 1.45 greater.

ACORN President Maude Hurd called the denial rates "a substantial shift in the wrong direction," and said they should be a "wake-up call" to both lenders and regulators.

"It is impossible to overstate the damage caused by these inequalities," she said at a press conference on the steps of a house in Washington's low-income Anacostia neighborhood where nearly two dozen families discussed their inability to find conventional financing.

"Without access to credit on fair terms, communities have no hope of emerging into strong, stable and safe neighborhoods."

But Joe Belew, president of the Consumer Bankers Association in Arlington, Va., discounted ACORN's conclusions, saying they "don't hold together."

Belew said lenders are "every bit as interested in increasing home ownership opportunities" as anyone else. "There's absolutely no reason to deny qualified applicants," he said.

He also noted that federal banking regulators are looking hard for bias in the lending process but are not finding any.

"The fact is that banks have continually improved their outreach, and applicants who are turned down initially are almost always given a second look," the industry spokesman said. "Anybody who is denied ought to go back in or apply elsewhere."

But ACORN's Hurd said the problem of racial disparity cannot be explained away," either as a consequence of acceptable practices or with the assertion that minorities have worse credit than whites.

ACORN is the nation's largest community-based organization, with more than 120,000 low and moderate-income members organized into 600 neighborhood chapters in 45 cities.

Even though denial rates fell significantly for all races between 2000 and 2001, the study said the deviation in rates between Blacks, Latinos and whites widened nationally largely because denial rates fell more quickly for Caucasians than minorities.

But that should not be misinterpreted to mean lower income whites face none of the hurdles other races face in obtaining a mortgage, it cautioned. "Traditional lending institutions continue to fail to adequately serve low and moderate-income communities of all races," it said.

According to the ACORN study, low and moderate-income neighborhoods comprise 26 percent of the country, yet they received just 12 percent of all conventional loans.

The study also found that differences in denial rates were evident even when comparing loan applicants of the same income, and was actually worse in the upper-income brackets. Higher income African Americans were rejected almost three times more frequently than their white counterparts while upper income Latinos were turned down more than twice as often.

"Even more disturbing," the report said, is that higher income Blacks were rebuffed more often than moderate income whites "whose incomes were only about half as large."

According to the report, the share of conventional loans made to African Americans and Latinos lags "far behind" their proportion of the population.

Blacks account for nearly 13 percent of the population, yet received just under 5 percent of the conventional purchase loans last year. Likewise, Latinos comprise almost 13 percent of the populace but received only 7.5 percent of such loans.

And the figures for conventional loans would be "far worse" if subprime loans were not counted as conventional loans, the report added.

Because traditional lenders "have excluded too many lower income and minority families from the economic mainstream," the study said, borrowers with credit issues often are forced to turn to subprime lenders who offer less beneficial terms at higher rates and more fees than their counterparts who lend only to customers with pristine credit records.

In 2000, 18.3 percent of the conventional purchase money mortgages received by African Americans were subprime loans, as were 12.2 percent of those to Latinos. In contrast, just 4.7 percent of such loans made to whites were considered subprime

Other key findings:

Published: October 9, 2002

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When Lew Sichelman first started writing about housing in 1969, he was the youngest real estate writer in the country. Now, 37 years later, he's one of the oldest -- and most decorated. He has been rated the top housing columnist in the country by the National Association of Realtors as well as by his peers in the National Association of Real Estate Editors. Indeed, NAREE has recognized his work on numerous occasions. One year - due to his advancing age, he can't recall which one - he earned top honors in the annual NAREE Journalism Contest in three out of the four major writing categories. It was the first time one writer has won so many NAREE awards in a single year. Known for his ability to make even the most difficult topics understandable, Sichelman also has been honored by the National Association of Home Builders and the Mortgage Bankers Association. He began providing in-depth coverage of and consumer-oriented information about housing and housing finance at the Washington Daily News, where he was real estate editor. He held that same position for nine more years at the Washington Star, which purchased the News in 1972. The Star, a so-called "writer's newspaper" which also had the misfortune of being an evening paper, was put out of its misery in 1981, and Sichelman, who had begun self-syndicating his column in 1978, decided to become a full-time columnist. Today, his column, "The Housing Scene," is distributed by United Media to newspapers throughout the country. He also is on the staff of National Mortgage News, an independent newspaper which is considered the bible of the mortgage business. And he writes for numerous other publications, including MarketWatch.com, where he answers readers questions once a week, Sports Illustrated (don't ask), RealtyTimes.com, BigBuilder and others. Sichelman is married, the father of five and grandfather of eleven.