Minority homeowners hardest hit by foreclosures

Black and Latino homeowners have been particularly hard hit by the foreclosure crisis, according to a New York Times analysis of foreclosures filed since 2005 and federal mortgage data. Mortgage defaults occur three times as often in mostly minority areas as in mostly white ones, and 85 percent of the most affected neighborhoods have a majority of black and Latino homeowners. The NAACP has filed a class-action lawsuit against several of the country’s largest banks for making the subprime loans that made up half the loans given to the New York City area’s black middle-income borrowers in 2005 and 2006.