Orange County NC Website
Therefore, compliance with. the Community Reinvestment Act has been slow in <br />achieving major shifts in loans to minority and low-income County residents. <br />It is important to note that conclusions. of discrimination cannot be based solely <br />on HMDA data. The HMDA analysis is the first step in identifying and <br />connecting patterns and practices of discrimination in mortgage lending. <br />Commonly errors are found in HMDA data. Unintentional errors in HMDA <br />reporting are subject to civil fines. Intentional misrepresentations are subject to <br />criminal penalties. <br />See HMDA Summary in the Appendix <br />B. Public Policies <br />Public policies and actions related to the approval of sites of publicly assisted housing <br />has not been a major impediment in this community. However, the adoption of an <br />Educational Impact Fee in Orange County in 1993 does pose an impediment to fair <br />housing choice. The fee is collected for all new residential construction. The <br />revenue generated by the fee is used to finance a portion of the cost of new public <br />school space created by new residential growth. <br />Presently, the fee is $3,000 in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district, and $750 in <br />the Orange County School District. It should be noted that to_ address this barrier, the <br />Orange County. Board of Commissioners adopted a Impact Fee Reimbursement <br />Policy which provides funds to non-profit housing developers construction rental and <br />owner-occupied housing to enable them to pay the fee without passing the cost to the <br />prospective renter or homebuyer. However, individuals nor for-profit developers are <br />eligible for reimbursement under the existing policy. <br />C. Administrative Policies <br />No major impediments are identified. <br />D. Residential Segregation <br />Residential settlement patterns indicate a high degree of spatial segregation between <br />minority and non-minority neighborhoods.. Census tracts in the western portion of <br />the County and a few around Chapel Hill are characterized by the most significant <br />concentration of minority populations. This spatial segregation is not primarily a <br />product of individual choice, but appears to be based on income and neighborhood <br />history. <br />In the 1993 report "Residential Segregation in North Carolina: A Barrier to African- <br />American Opportunity", author Lance Freeman defines isolation and dissimilarity <br />indices as measures of segregation within a community. Specifically, the <br />dissimilarity index is an indicator of the even distribution of a particular group over <br />geographic units. In this report, Orange County had an index of .61 which means that <br />61 % of the African-American population in the County would have to move to <br />achieve complete integration. The isolation index is the probability of a minority <br />individual sharing residential space only with. other minorities. In Orange County, <br />20 <br />