Filed under the Fair Housing Act, the suit accuses HSBC of systematically steering minority borrowers into subprime mortgages, a practice deemed “reverse redlining”. This caused a chain of defaults, falling property values, and eroded the counties’ tax base by hundreds of millions of dollars. Wells Fargo settled two similar suits in Baltimore and Shelby County, Tennessee out of court.
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution at www.ajc.com)