The attached images of Oakland demographic data illustrate the striking
contrast of foreclosure rates between predominately black neighborhoods
(shown in red) and predominately white neighborhoods (shown in blue).
Final foreclosures are indicated by black dots and show foreclosures that
have occurred within the last 3 1/2 years, between 2009 to 2013.
Minority neighborhoods targeted by lending institutions through high
proportions of subprime mortgages suffered an epidemic of foreclosures that
left boarded-up homes on which the repossessing financial institutions
often failed to perform routine maintenance. From Jamaica, Queens, New
York, to Oakland, California, strong, middle class African American
neighborhoods saw nearly two decades of gains reversed in a matter of not
years—but months” (Donovan 2011).
In some predominantly African American blocks of the middle-class Cleveland
suburb of Shaker Heights, for example, as many as one-third of the homes
were vacant after foreclosures on subprime borrowers. “The moral outrage,”
observed the Shaker Heights mayor, “is that subprime lenders have targeted
our seniors and African-Americans, people who saved all their lives to get
a step up” (Eckholm 2007).
http://www.epi.org/publication/bp335-boa-countrywide-discriminatory-lending/
The racially targeted predatory lending practices of major financial
institutions which are sanctioned by regulatory agencies have resulted in
marked decreases of black populations within Oakland in the last decade.
See
http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/Oakland.htm