In Chapter 11 of Urban Issues, it is stated that regulations require lenders to closely examine factors such as a borrower’s income and debt levels which indicate an applicant’s ability to repay. Thus, according to Urban Issues, these factors are more often correlated by race and ethnicity. The fact that this is the case poses a really big problem with the system. It poses the issue of inequality once again and that not everyone has a fair opportunity of achieving their goals, whether it getting into a prestigious university or owning a home. Chapter 11 of Urban Issues highlights the point that non whites are often stagnant socioeconomically because they are not shown a way out of their income brackets and more so poverty. For instance, Urban Issues states that the HUD is guilty of consigning the poor to the inner city instead of having public housing throughout the city. In addition, one third of all African Americans living in the city were living in highly or hyper segregated neighborhoods. The only way people can really want a better life is if they have something to compare to. If non whites are constantly placed in neighborhoods that are impoverished then they would not know any better and even if they want to create a change, there are no resources accessible for them to do so. Some stated examples that showed this type of discrimination to be true was that the white testers who posed as customers were shown to a “safe” neighborhood while those who were black were shown to less desirable, high crime areas and African Americans, Hispanics and Asians seeking apartments to rent were shown fewer units than whites. One interesting point that was discussed in Urban Issues was that not much funding is granted to testers and part of the reason for this I believe, might be because the government does not want to openly admit discrimination is an issue because it’ll ultimately fall upon them to fix it. Furthermore, something that was quite surprising was that the allegations of housing discrimination against people with disabilities represented more than half of the complaints filed in 2014.

In Chapter 12 of Urban Issues, it is noted that in Detroit 67% of the people living there, live under the poverty line. One of the main reasons for this as discussed is because people aren’t earning enough to keep up with the cost of living. Hence, this leads into the topic of increasing minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage has its pros and cons like everything else but it’s safe to say it’s necessary if for example in Detroit, half of the population is living in poverty. Yes, business owners rightfully earn their money because it’s their businesses but they can afford to spend more on labor to ensure that people have enough to survive. It was also quite surprising to see that anti-poverty programs account for only 1/6 of federal spending but yet lifted millions of Americans out of poverty. As much as anti poverty programs like social security and food stamps help people in need, the government should also put more funding into programs and initiatives that would prevent people from being at the poverty line in the first place.