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You would be wrong. It is a widely held belief that the government forced lenders to give mortgages to unqualified poor people, and that is what caused the cra

• Spooky23 9y ago
  The two things aren't mutually exclusive. The government absolutely did strongly encourage writing loans to less conventional borrowers, with the implied threat of civil rights investigations. At first, the encouragement was tied to home ownership programs that pre-screened applicants and provided training for owning a home. My dad ran one of these for a few years, and they were remarkably successful at transitioning section 8 recipients to homeowners and often homeowner/landlords. Later, they decided that wasn't fast enough and they skipped the education and screening and just wrote loans.