Sublime lending

Housing | Christian groups nationwide are finding alternatives to the tyranny of subprime | Mark Bergin

W.A. Harewood for WORLD

Bob Lupton, founder and president of FCS Urban Ministries in Atlanta, never believed in the overreliance on subprime products to be sustainable. Despite a ministry mission to help low-income families buy homes and establish community, his organization somehow steered clear of the temptation to employ overly exotic financing options.

But the marching orders kept coming from the top. Political leaders, including President George W. Bush and New York's powerful Democratic congressman Charles Rangel, extolled the value of rising home ownership rates throughout the early part of the decade, seemingly unconcerned with the correlating rise of suspect lending practices.

Armed with government sanction, federal guarantees, and an overzealous profit motive, banks and brokers discarded long-held loan requirements and reinvented the world of subprime—no credit, no income, no down payment, no problem. The overwhelming bulk of real estate market leaders embraced the politically popular maxim of home ownership for all. In so doing, they ushered in an economy-wide slowdown complete with an entirely new set of maxims: home equity for few, home foreclosure for many, and tax-dollar bailouts funded by all.

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November 01, 2008, Vol. 23, No. 22

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