Gia Gray seems like a dream client for any bank: a well-to-do general practitioner living in an exclusive Bay Area town, in a 5,000-square-foot mansion with a master bathroom larger than my office.

With a credit score of over 800, she expected little drama when she and her husband decided to refinance their home in Danville and two other investment properties in 2020 to record some of the lowest interest rates in recent history. Remember when 3% loans were a thing?

But after endless excuses and delays in her applications: “I started to feel black,”

She grey

told me. Her bank, Wells Fargo,

she said

right

–

turned her down for the investment properties,

she said

and slowly rolled out the application on her residence, coming up with new requirements as the process continued.

“On a visceral level, I felt something wasn’t right,” she said.

Across the country, other borrowers have had similar experiences. Earlier this year, a federal court in Northern California, where Wells Fargo is headquartered, consolidated the claims of Gray and seven other Black plaintiffs into one case that could be certified as a class action lawsuit in the coming months.

The lead attorney in the case, Dennis S. Ellis of Los Angeles, says up to 750,000 minority customers across the country, black, Asian and Latino, may have been affected by what he sees as a pattern of discriminatory lending that denies qualified borrowers or forced higher interest rates and more expensive loans.

It’s a form of modern economic redlining, he told me, that if proven true caused pain that resonated further than the borrowers, many of whom missed out on the opportunity to save hundreds or thousands of their loans each month.

.

It also harmed black and minority communities as a whole, as it took away an exceptional opportunity to build wealth for generations through affordable housing

property.

“Realizing the American dream of owning your own home isn’t just about having a safe place to live,” Ellis noted. “It’s about securing the future of the next generations because of the incredible financial stability of that house

property.”

Ellis claims the problem arose in part because Wells Fargo was short-staffed during the pandemic and relied on flawed algorithms and an automated system that may have had discrimination baked into it.

But it wouldn’t be the first time Wells Fargo has been discriminated against. In 2012, the United States Department of Justice won a $175

–

million settlement against the bank, the second largest exchange

–

loan settlement in the

Department DOJs

history, due to allegations that Wells Fargo engaged in a pattern or practice of “discriminating against qualified African American and Hispanic borrowers in the provision of mortgages from 2004 to 2009”.

The cities of Oakland and Philadelphia also have South Wells Fargo for discriminatory lending practices; Philly settled its case for $10 million in 2019.

Wells Fargo has been accused of conducting fake interviews with minority candidates for positions already promised to other applicants, vile housing assessments and ignoring discrimination issues that, if exposed, could hurt the bank’s bottom line.

Wells Fargo has denied all allegations, including those made

in this lawsuit. In a statement, the company said it is confident it follows all required guidelines and that its underwriting practices are applied consistently regardless of customer race or ethnicity.

“These allegations against Wells Fargo stand in stark contrast to the company’s significant and long-standing commitment to closing the gap in minority home ownership,” the statement said.

However, it’s not just owning a house. It owns it on good terms.

Google tells me that a $500,000 loan with a term of 30 years at 3% interest costs about $900 less per month than a loan at 6% interest

about $324,000 over its lifetime. For the people who weren’t able to refinance, that money is going into the company’s pockets instead of paying for college or retirement or funding other investments.

The lawsuit alleges that in 2020, “at a time when millions of white Americans benefited from historically low home loan interest rates,

“

Wells Fargo approved 47% of refinance applications from Black homeowners, 53% from Hispanic and/or Latino homeowners, and 67% from Asian

–

US applicants. That compares to 71%, 79%

,

and 85%, respectively, for these same ones

ethnic

groups over all other lenders, according to the lawsuit.

That same year, Wells Fargo approved 71% of home refinance applications from white borrowers.

Oh, Wells Fargo. Those are some dismal numbers.

The lawsuit also reveals federal records

S

Wells Fargo was more likely to approve refinancing applications from low-earning white borrowers than high-earning black borrowers. analyze

dates from

eight 8

million refinance applications filed in 2020, Ellis and his team found that white applicants who earned less than $63,000 per year were “more likely to have their refinance application approved by Wells Fargo than black refinance applicants who earned between $120,000 and $168,000 per year,” according to the lawsuit .

The insidiousness of financial discrimination read in

how difficult it is to prove on an individual basis and in

how hard it is to even believe it’s happening. The loan process can be so remote and impersonal, even more so during the isolation of

the pandemic that Gray and her co-defendants were initially unsure about

if what they felt really happened.

Last week, Gray met two of those other borrowers in person at a press conference in San Francisco. I spoke to the three of them afterwards in a coffee shop

S

but mostly I just listened, because there was a huge sense of relief and camaraderie when they shared how similar their experiences were.

Until the lawsuit, Aaron Braxton, a Los Angeles homeowner, had wondered, “Are they doing this to everyone, or are they just doing this to black people?” he said.

Braxton was one of the first to file a complaint in 2020. A well-known screenwriter, playwright, and teacher, Braxton had owned his home in a historically black neighborhood near USC for about 18 years and was a fraction of what it was worth when he set out to refinance his Wells Fargo mortgage. Like Gray, it was one thing after another despite never missing a payment and having good credit. By the time Wells Fargo approved his loan, interest rates had risen, and so had his frustration.

“I said to them, ‘I’m going to sue you. I don’t know how I’m going to sue you, but I’m going to sue you, because I know I’m not alone,'” he said.

Scrolling through her phone during the pandemic lockdown, Gray came across a story about Braxton. “It was like a bright lamp,” she recalled, “and I said, ‘Oh

,

my God, this happened to someone else.'”

Christopher Williams flew in from Georgia, where he owns a home and rental properties. He worked in the financial industry for decades, so when Wells Fargo offered him a loan that was 3 points higher than he expected, he asked why. Williams said the bank couldn’t give him straight answers, and he

,

at

,

began to suspect that it was about the color of his skin.

Now Williams said he wondered how many people out there accepted loans at higher rates or higher fees without knowing it. “How many of those loans and lines of credit are on Wells Fargo’s books now

,

?” he asked.

Ellis will appear in federal court in San Francisco on Thursday, the anniversary of George Floyd’s death. He says that just as the Floyd’s Death Movement has worked to address social justice issues, he hopes this case can raise awareness of financial injustice and its toll, which he considers the “21st.”

–

century battlefield of civil rights.”

Just as we have cried out against police practices that kill black lives, so we condemn Wells Fargo’s racially motivated banking practices that kill black opportunities,” said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is also involved in the case.

Interest rates are not as attractive as the tragedy we experienced with Floyd, but Crump and Ellis make an important point.

This is a capitalist joint.

Until we all have equal opportunities to create wealth, we will be left with the oppressed and the oppressors, who all too often get away with strangling equity under the cover of paperwork and algorithms.