In 2019, Crystal Marie and Eskias McDaniels were set to close on their dream home in Charlotte, N.C.

They were excellent applicants: good jobs, plenty of savings, and great credit.

Then, their mortgage application was denied. themarkup.org/denied/2021/08…
The reason? Crystal Marie was a contractor, not a full-time employee—even though her boss told the lender she wasn’t at risk of losing her job.

Her co-workers, also contractors, had mortgages. They are White. She is Black.
Crystal Marie’s lender, loanDepot, denied that race had anything to do with the decision. Screenshot of article that reads: "The company’s vice
Our investigation found that lenders denied people of color at higher rates than similar White applicants.

In Charlotte, where Crystal Marie lives, they were 50% more likely to deny loans to Black applicants than White applicants with similar financial profiles.
Crystal Marie pushed back against the denial with the help of her real estate agent and boss.

At the last minute, at around 8 p.m. the night before her original closing date, she got an email from the lender: “You’re cleared to close.”
“It means so much to me, as a Black person, to own property in a place where not that many generations ago you were property,” Crystal Marie told @lkirchner. Portrait of a Black woman taken from the waist up. She is st
Read our full investigation on racial disparities in mortgage lending algorithms here. themarkup.org/denied/2021/08…

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More from @themarkup

25 Aug
We found racial disparities in home loan denial rates throughout the mortgage industry.

But among large lenders, those owned by our nation’s largest home builders had some of the widest gaps, report @MalenaCarollo and @eh_mah_nwel. Thread. 🧵themarkup.org/denied/2021/08…
Have you heard of D.R. Horton, Lennar Corporation, or PulteGroup Inc.? These are our nation’s largest home builders.

They have some things in common beyond new construction: owning mortgage companies that denied applicants of color at higher rates than their White counterparts.
Let’s start with the widest disparity: DHI Mortgage, which finances homes built by parent company D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest home builder.

It was 160% more likely to deny Black applicants and 100% more likely to deny Latinos than similar White applicants.
Read 7 tweets
25 Aug
#NEW: Lenders are more likely to deny home loans to people of color than White people with similar financial backgrounds.

Black people were 80% more likely to be denied, @eh_mah_nwel and @lkirchner reveal in their latest investigation.
themarkup.org/denied/2021/08…
Nationally, our analysis found, the mortgage industry was 40% to 80% more likely in 2019 to deny home loans to people of color than to White people with similar financial characteristics. Applicants of color denied ...
We also found significant disparities in 89 metropolitan areas, spanning every region of the country, from Boston, Mass., to Riverside, Calif. Map of the US that has two ...
Read 15 tweets
12 Feb
🧵 Our #Blacklight project was created because we wanted to give our readers a sense of agency about their relationship to technology.
Our tool is a real-time privacy inspector that visits user-requested websites, scans for known types of privacy violations, and returns an instant privacy analysis of the inspected site.
Today, #Blacklight scanned its one-millionth website, a milestone for us personally and for you, our readers.
Read 14 tweets
30 Nov 20
🧵 We think that the Van Buren v. United States case before the Supreme Court today is a threat to data journalism. So much so that we filed an amicus brief. This is why:
The case deals with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and its definition of "exceeds authorized access" in relation to one’s intentionally accessing a computer system they have authorization to access.
Van Buren was a police officer arrested by the FBI and convicted of computer fraud in Georgia after he used his access to work databases for personal financial gain.
Read 17 tweets
8 Oct 20
1/ The House Judiciary Committee released a report Tuesday urging the breakup of Big Tech. It caps a 16-month investigation. A short thread with some context from our previous reporting, including one of our investigations cited in the report.
2/ In July, the heads of Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook testified before the committee together for the first time. Lawmakers grilled the CEOs, alleging the companies have abused their monopoly power. themarkup.org/2020/07/30/con…
3/ A day before the hearing, we published a months-long investigation into Google Search. @leonyin and @adrjeffries found Google gave 41 percent of the first page of search results to the company’s own properties and products—a lot of it at the top. themarkup.org/google-the-gia…
Read 7 tweets
28 Sep 20
🚨Job alert🚨
The Markup is hiring! Applications are open for an editor, beat reporters, chief of staff and a tech coordinator.
⬇️ More info in the thread
✉️ DMs open if you have questions
🔗 Please share with your networks
The news editor will oversee a team of reporters and freelancers who will persistently monitor and uncover the ways that tech affects people. Apply here: boards.greenhouse.io/themarkup/jobs…
The labor reporter will cover the effects of technology on work and the labor force. Apply here: boards.greenhouse.io/themarkup/jobs…
Read 7 tweets

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