Last night, the curtain closed on the Huntington Theatre Company's powerful production of "The Luck of the Irish." Set in the 1950's, the play tells the story of an African-American family trying to buy a house in an all-white suburb. They end up paying a struggling Irish family to act as their front in order to complete the purchase. The play moves back and forth from the 1950's to the present day and leaves the question of how far we have come since that time open for inspection.

Clearly, the days of restrictive covenants and real estate agents and homeowners blatantly refusing to sell homes in "white" neighborhoods to people of color are behind us. But studies show that we still have work to do.

In Changing Patterns XVIII, a report prepared for the Massachusetts Community Banking Council, total home-purchase lending to blacks and Latinos was highly concentrated in a small number of the state’s cities and towns and entirely absent in others. Changing Patterns was authored by Jim Campen, professor emeritus of economics at UMass Boston and longtime MAHA board member.

In its eighteenth annual report on mortgage lending patterns, the Massachusetts Community & Banking Council (MCBC) confirms a major shift in the mortgages provided to Massachusetts homebuyers. In the wake of the implosion of the subprime mortgage industry, high-cost subprime lending has almost disappeared, while government-backed lending has grown dramatically.

Changing Patterns XVIII: Mortgage Lending to Traditionally Underserved Borrowers & Neighborhoods in Boston, Greater Boston and Massachusetts, 2010, provides analyses of lending patterns in the city of Boston, Greater Boston and Massachusetts in 2010, as well as for each of its thirty-three largest cities and towns. The report was prepared for MCBC by Jim Campen, professor emeritus of economics at UMass Boston and longtime MAHA board member. Click here for the full report.