African-Americans are the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis based on who has received foreclosure prevention counseling, reports NeighborWorks America, the administrator of the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling (NMFC) program.
The organization said that 28 percent of the more than 363,000 homeowners who received counseling through NFMC funding were African-Americans. That’s more than three times their representation of total homeowners.
In all, 53 percent of NFMC program clients were minorities, more than twice the overall percentage of minority homeowners.
The report showed that lower-income homeowners are likely to have a greater rate of foreclosure starts than higher-income owners. Fifty-eight percent of African-American NFMC clients reported earning 80 percent or below their area median income.
The study also found that of all the NFMC clients that held mortgages with interest rates higher than 8 percent, 35 percent were African-American homeowners. Yet African-Americans only account for 19 percent of the nation’s subprime mortgages.
NeighborWorks analyzed data collected by organizations that received NFMC funding through March 31. The program was created by Congress to help address the subprime foreclosure crisis. In total, $333 million has been awarded to Department of Housing and Urban Development-approved housing counseling intermediaries, state housing finance agencies, and NeighborWorks organizations through the first and second rounds of the program.
