YouTube video

Ten years after the economic recession, credit has returned for most Americans. By 2016, the number of conventional mortgages had risen 95 percent since the housing bust. But Reveal’s yearlong investigation found that some Americans are being left out of this economic prosperity. Reporters Aaron Glantz and Emmanuel Martinez analyzed 31 million mortgage records and determined that people are color are being systematically denied home mortgages in 61 metro areas across the country.

Part one of a two-part series with PBS NewsHour takes a closer look at how this plays out in Philadelphia, one of the largest cities in America where African Americans were disproportionately turned away.

KEPT OUT

  • Read: For people of color, banks are shutting the door to homeownership
  • Read: Gentrification became low-income lending law’s unintended consequence
  • Read: 8 lenders that aren’t serving people of color for home loans
  • Listen: The red line: Racial disparities in lending
  • Learn: How we did our analysis
  • Explore: Search for lending disparities where you live, or text LOAN to 202-873-8325 to Reveal. Standard text rates apply.
  • Read: The full white paper
  • Watch: Struggle for black and Latino mortgage applicants suggests modern-day redlining

Reporter
Aaron Glantz

Data Reporter
Emmanuel Martinez

Producer
Rachel de Leon

Senior Producers
David Ritsher
Richard Coolidge

Videographers
Rachel de Leon
Jaywon Chloe
Kimberly Paynter

Archival
Ringo Chiu/Zuma Press
Alamy Stock Photo

Production Assistants
Cody Knoblauch
Matthew MacLean

Executive Producer
Amanda Pike
Sara Just

Editor in Chief
Amy Pyle

Produced for
PBS NewsHour

Supported by
The Fledgling Fund

Creative Commons License

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Rachel de Leon is a reporter and producer for TV and documentaries for Reveal. De Leon has worked in video for more than 10 years as a videographer and producer. Throughout 2017, she was the coordinating producer for Glassbreaker Films – an initiative from The Center for Investigative Reporting to support female filmmakers – helping to produce five half-hour documentaries for national and festival distribution, and more than 20 online minidocumentaries. In 2016, she won two Emmys for her work on the web series "The Dead Unknown" and the PBS NewsHour segment "Deadly Oil Fields." In 2014, she completed her first short documentary, “Cab City,” for her master’s thesis in the documentary program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. De Leon is based in Reveal’s Emeryville, California, office.

David Ritsher is the senior editor for TV and documentaries for Reveal. He has produced and edited award-winning investigative documentaries for over 15 years, on subjects ranging from loose nukes in Russia to Latino gangs in Northern California. His work has appeared on FRONTLINE, PBS NewsHour, ABC News, National Geographic, Discovery, KQED and other national broadcast outlets. Before joining CIR, David was the coordinating producer for FRONTLINE/World for over six broadcast seasons and championed much of its experimentation with video on the web.