If you own a house, especially with a sub-prime mortgage, you’ve probably heard the recent news that Countrywide is going to refinance up to $16 billion of loans to help people avoid foreclosure. This is great news amidst the recent housing crisis because it means people will be able to stay in their homes and avoid foreclosure. Those who were taken advantage of by predatory lending, and those who simply made unwise decisions, during the housing boom will have a chance to fix things up and avoid possible horrible outcomes of those mistakes. And, yes, this should benefit the poor, as well as the majority of the middle class, who are facing current foreclosure.

However, predatory lending is nothing new. If you come from a low-income or minority race community, you’ve seen plenty of this before. Predatory lending plagues a great many urban communities. Banks are often few and far between, check cashing shops on every corner, and redlining have negatively impacted low-income communities for decades. Not only that, but forcing foreclosure is often a strategy used to gentrify urban areas and force home-owning poor families out of their own neighborhood. Unfortunately, the plight of the poor in our country has rarely caught the ear of our politicians, corporations or even churches.

This handout will benefit the poor somewhat, alongside the middle class it is aimed at helping out, but will these same sorts of handouts, government attention and concern continue to exist once this ‘housing crisis’ is over? Unless radical changes happen, the urban landscapes will still be full of predatory lenders and redlining practices.