Group 3: Race as a Fault Line on Sub-Prime Lending

How might race be used as a filter for news stories?

Our group has severall story ideas related to the subprime lending issue coverage:
1. Create a profile of lending institution officers and their demographics. Are financial institutions creating special programs to recruit minority officers?
2. Examine high-minority neighborhoods and examine the sub-prime lending market and use peer income neighborhood for comparison.
3. Examine African Americans isolated in high-income, racial enclaves and whether they have received different loan rates vis a vis their neighbors.
4. Look at multi-family home ownership...several family members coming together to buy a home.
5. Redlining and the subprime market. Where are these in our coverage area and how does subprime play out in this community.
6. Look at diff. ethnic populationsa and lending practices. What are the differences?
7. Muslim banks don’t believe in loan interest. How do they handle the mortgage market.
8. How African Americans use the telephone to prescreen for mortgages before they fill out loan applications.
9. How investors have used sub-prime mortgage to purchase investment properties and who is actually defaulting in areas that are experiencing a housing bubble.
10. Use multimedia Google mash-up to overlay geography, income and mortgage packages like a Zillow interface.