I'll have a cone please, and if I
can have a shrubbery that'd be great
for Mckay's new way, the cost of
buying a first home always seemed
a little too far out of reach.
When you're in ministry and your
wife's a teacher and you have kids,
you're like. How am I gonna
be able to afford this?
But then they found a place
called the bottom less than
10 minutes from downtown.
It was first settled in 1845 as
a community for newly freed,
enslaved black people.
Today it's a housing development,
about 100 new homes will rise
from these empty lots.
51 of them are set aside as
affordable housing for families with
a maximum income of $71,200 to be
a part of something where
every month you're witnessing
growth and you're almost.
Drawn to saying oh wow,
I'm a part of something.
In our banking below 30 series,
we've shown you how many ways banks
avoid lending money in Dallas's
black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
Blocking minority families
from building wealth,
and then we heard about banks
lending money here in the bottom,
and we wondered what would
convince a risk adverse bank to
lend money in a high minority low
income neighborhood with crumbling
infrastructure where hardly anything's
been built in the last 50 years.
Tell me a. When you when you walk this
sidewalk, what do you think about?
I see hope I see
I see a dream coming to fruition.
Effie Dennison is the director of
Community Development and corporate
responsibility at Texas Capital Bank.
In a previous story,
we reported that Texas Capital
participates with other banks to lend
hundreds of millions of dollars to
high cost lenders that critics say.
Prey on minority neighborhoods.
But here in the bottom Texas capital
was the first to make alone,
but the amount is undisclosed.
Dennison describes it as a line of
credit in the millions that funds
the construction of the new homes.
Dennison says banks have an
obligation to go look for these
kinds of deals in the minority
neighborhoods of Southern Dallas,
it takes getting out into.
You cannot do what sitting in
your desk and think it's going to
just come and fall in your lap.
Dennison says one reason the
bank felt comfortable lending
here is the city of Dallas.
Made it attractive by
pouring in its own money.
2.4 million given to developers to
buy a plots and make neighborhood
improvements 5 and a quarter million
spent on digging new sewer lines.
Paving roads and installing.
St lights.
So this investment is is one
that we see it as good business,
not a charity because there's
nothing hand out about this.
This loan had to underwrite just
like any other loan that we did.
But we knew that we had to look
at it from a different lens.
You look with a different lens.
Does that mean that the bank
will accept making less money
than if they put this money in? Prosper or
Plano or something.
Two different markets.
You may have to stretch your credit
box a little bit more because it's
not gonna pencil necessarily that
it would if it was a slam dunk in
the Frisco area where is vested in
this community as this home builder.
As these home families are going
to be moving in here this this
is this is our legacy too.
How many homes like
this think you've built in
your life? Probably 300,
you got a lot of experience.
Yeah, a lot of it. Yeah,
in the bottom they're building
about 10 houses a year.
And they're being built by small
black builders like Calvin Barry.
Over the years, many black builders
like Barry have struggled to find a
bank willing to make construction
loans. We have to go take a
mortgage out on our home.
You see it on TV where some
of the people that, well,
I'm going to take a mortgage
out on my home. We do that.
You mortgage your own home to
go build a home, you're right.
Right, because the bank isn't going
to give you the case, the bank is
not gonna give you the money
on this job. Barry doesn't need a loan
because he's been hired as a contractor,
but collecting a paycheck is a
lot less profitable for him.
He's here because he hopes his work will
lead to better banking relationships
so he can get his own loans to build
his own houses in other parts of town.
How would you describe the opportunity?
The the the opportunity you can't
get anywhere without the opportunity.
So even if I've got to.
Work a little harder.
Then this it affords me some
connections that I might not have had.
If you're happy and you know it, clap your
hands, clap, clap, clap.
Well, let's get back to michaelus
remember how he didn't have quite
enough money to buy his house while
it wasn't just the affordable selling
price that got him over the hump,
it was also Bank of America.
Previously we reported about how few
loans some banks make in the neighborhood
surrounding their Southern Dallas branches.
That includes Bank of America near Fair Park.
It made 19 home loans over
the course of two years.
However, in a similarly sized
area to the north in Lakewood,
it made 143 loans.
During the same time,
but Michaelus had a different
experience for his loan.
Bank of America gave him cash toward his
down payment and a discount on his closing.
Bank of America says this is part of
an initiative to help 60,000 low to
moderate income families buy homes
by 2025 and strengthen neighborhoods.
What's
the difference between renting
an apartment and owning a home?
I think homeowners,
especially for her family.
It's something something deeper
and you get to say every little
bit of this home is mine like and
and I don't have to worry about.
Are we going to resign next year
or move to another apartment?
Dallas says there is an urgent need for
20,000 units of affordable housing
in the city, mostly when something's
built its apartments.
But it's home ownership
that truly impacts lives,
sending ripples of confidence out
into the community and that kind of
change just doesn't happen without
a bank that's willing to lend.
I'm David Schechter reporting.