Members of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee ask Jerome H. Powell how he plans to address disparities in lending between whites and others.

Emmanuel Martinez
Data Reporter
Emmanuel Martinez is a data reporter for The Markup. For the past six years, he’s worked in the same position for the investigative news outlet and public radio show Reveal in the San Francisco Bay Area, using data, statistics, and programming to tell stories. His most recent work examined access to homeownership and mortgage discrimination, where he analyzed 31 million housing records to prove that people of color were being routinely denied mortgages in 61 major U.S. metro areas. Emmanuel has also worked on a tool to help match unidentified bodies with missing persons’ reports, reported on why wildfires in the West are growing larger and sparking closer to homes, and dug into water shortages in California’s Central Valley, which produces a quarter of the nation’s food.
Politicians express outrage about lending disparities
At the national and state levels, they vow to ensure people of color get equal access to home loans and the public gets access to lending information.
The red line: Racial disparities in lending
In dozens of cities across the country, lenders are more likely to deny loans to applicants of color than white ones.
Gentrification became low-income lending law’s unintended consequence
A 1977 law, designed to correct redlining, didn’t anticipate a day when historically black neighborhoods would be sought by young white homebuyers.
How we identified lending disparities in federal mortgage data
Reveal analyzed publicly available data released through the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, combing through 31 million records for 2015 and 2016.
8 lenders that aren’t serving people of color for home loans
Among the 6,600 U.S. lenders, some stood out for particularly extreme practices.
For people of color, banks are shutting the door to homeownership
Reveal’s analysis of mortgage data found evidence of modern-day redlining in 61 metro areas across the country.
Nonprofits seeking public information at record rates
New report finds that advocacy groups have filed a record number of FOIA lawsuits.
FOIA lawsuits hit 25-year high
The number of lawsuits filed against the federal government over access to records is at an all-time high, according to a report.
Program to identify dead and missing across US put on hold
The largest lab that tests DNA for missing people and unidentified dead no longer will accept DNA samples from law enforcement agencies and crime laboratories across the country because of a nearly $1 million cut to its funding.