RFP Staff
♦ On Tuesday, during Salisbury City Council’s public commentary period, three Salisbury residents Nan Lund, Whitney Peckman, and Kenneth Lydell Muhammad El spoke out against Salisbury’s unfair housing practices.
Nan Lund, a Salisbury activist, described the state of home loan practices, drawing on data derived from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The data demonstrated that loan applications were being shot down at varying rates depending on gender, race, and ethnicity. Race, according to Lund, was significant in whether a loan was approved. Issued home loans in the area often demonstrated a higher than usual interest rate.
Lund described small business loans, saying, “Loans were intended to target low to moderate income communities as measured by median family income to the area. A substantial portion of these loans went to tracts in which the median family income was over 120% of the median family income in the county.”
Next up was Whitney Peckman who zeroed in on Salisbury’s home ownership rates among communities where minorities and the poor lived. Peckman believed increasing home ownership would boost Salisbury’s tax base. Peckman also noted that frequently poorer Salisbury residents did not understand their “fair housing” rights. She put forward the idea of a panel who would travel to Salisbury’s poor areas and set up credit counseling services that might boost home ownership.
Salisbury community advocate Kenneth Lydell Muhammad El was the last to speak and urged City Council to take seriously Tuesday’s report and take immediate corrective action. He noted that the some of the report’s items and statistics were symbolic of institutional racism.
For added understanding of the issues brought up by Lund, Peckman, and Muhammad El, read this report:
