BY ED FELIEN
U.S. Bank is paying more than $200 million to improve its brand by securing naming rights to the Vikings stadium.
Just last year U.S. Bank agreed to pay a different $200 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by knowingly originating and underwriting mortgage loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Justice Department. “By misusing government programs designed to maintain and expand homeownership, U.S. Bank not only wasted taxpayer funds, but inflicted harm on homeowners and the housing market that lasts to this day,” said the Justice Department’s Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Stuart F. Delery.
Myron Orfield’s report on housing discrimination in the Twin Cities metropolitan area last year documented that the area lost $20.5 billion as a result of racist redlining in lending practices by mortgage bankers in the Twin Cities. Most of that money was lost to homeowners who had to pay higher interest rates and higher origination fees because of their race or because they lived in a racially mixed community. As a result of these racist practices by U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo, millions of dollars in property tax revenue was lost to municipalities and counties that saw their tax base shrink as a result of foreclosures.
Many Minnesotans feel self-righteous and superior to our white brothers and sisters in the South who fly a Confederate flag, but aren’t we guilty of enshrining institutional racism by naming a sports stadium, built with hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars, after a bank that has been found guilty of destroying minority communities with racist lending practices?
