Agenda - 10-05-1999 - 10c - Laserfiche WebLink

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