Wells Fargo Accused Of Discrimination
A federal lawsuit alleges that Wells Fargo & Co. uses the Internet to discriminate against minority home lenders and encourage racial segregation.
The allegations center on Wells Fargo's "Community Calculator," an online search tool designed to help prospective home buyers shop for suitable neighborhoods.
The problem, according to the suit amended Wednesday, is that the search tool uses racial descriptions to categorize neighborhoods depicted as downtrodden.
It alleges violations of the Fair Housing Act and seeks a court order forcing Wells to remove the racial descriptions from its Web site and "any other appropriate relief."
The descriptions include "low income" neighborhoods, defined as an area where 86 percent of the residents are blacks who "tend to purchase fast food and takeout food from chicken restaurants."
"They are including some of the worst racial stereotypes possible," said Michael Daniel, an attorney who filed the amendment on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a nonprofit group.
The lawsuit also alleges that the Community Calculator steers people of the same ethnic background to similar neighborhoods.
In a statement, Wells said that the bank is only trying to help homebuyers find the right place to live.
The Community Calculator "is designed to help customers make informed buying decisions using criteria such as education levels, housing characteristics, household by type, crime index and population," the lender said. "The Community Calculator is not designed to use race as a tool to guide home buyers' decision making."
Other neighborhood categories include "Middle Class Urban Families," where 90 percent of the residents are black and wine coolers are popular, and "West Coast Immigrants," where 70 percent of the population is Hispanic and speaks Spanish at home.
In a sample submission made by The Associated Press on Wednesday, these three categories also appeared next to "distressed neighborhoods," where 40 percent of the residents receive some type of public assistance and 25 percent are unemployed.
"With all the fuss about police profiling, can you imagine what would happen if this sort of thing were on a cop Web site?" Daniel asked.
The original lawsuit was filed in April in Dallas federal court by a woman who alleged Wells' lending practices discriminated against minorities.
Daniel amended the lawsuit Wednesday to include ACORN, which has 125,000 members, as a plaintiff and introduce the allegations that Wells is using its Web site as a discriminatory tool.
The amended lawsuit alleges violations of the Fair Housing Act and seeks a court order forcing Wells to remove the racial descriptions from its Web site and "any other appropriate relief."
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